Day Two

The second day is sort of the first real day of school. We begin to settle down into a routine and the students begin to actually use their books and start learning. I like the second day better than the first usually!

Today we started with silent reading. Most classes call this DEAR. We call is Reader’s Workshop because we’ll do it slightly differently. For today, though, we just practiced picking books and reading. We also started our Writer’s Workshop. Today students brainstormed possible topics and started rough drafts. We also began our Open Court work today, focusing on what we know about our theme of Friendship. We start our phonics component with a view of consonants and short vowel words. Today we practice blending short a phonograms.

After lunch, we started our first Science unit on living things. The six weeks we spend on this prepares us nicely for the next Open Court theme, City Wildlife. We also started our music today. At first, since we are spending time working on steady beat and rhythmic speaking, students don’t quite get that it’s music, but nothing is more fundamental than rhythm.

After lunch, we did relays in PE and discussed odd and even in math. I explained how my two dogs could divide by two and knew the difference between odd and even. They liked the idea of canine math.

Homework:  Students had about 15 minutes to start this in class so there should not be many questions.

1. Finish the Science questions, page A 9. Most students did finish these in class.


2. Write 4 statements and 4 questions. The content is unimportant here; I’m looking for correct use of capital and periods and to see if there are subjects and verbs in each sentence.


3. Do the subtraction facts worksheet. This should be fast if the students really know the facts and aren’t counting on fingers.


4. Do page 3 in the Math book. Write answers only on lined paper. This deals with odd and even.


5. Continue studying spelling if needed for Friday’s test.