Update

Sorry for a couple missed days. Life has become pretty hectic around here. More on that later....

Anyhow, I we had a great day today. We came back today to looking at our fantasy stories. We worked in partners, and each student read his or her own paper while a friend listened and evaluated. We particularly were looking for the use of sensory details in description, the problem and solution of the story, and whether or not the author used dialogue. These are all areas where just about every paper can be better, and I think that our young authors got some good feedback.

Their only homework tonight will be doing the second rough draft of the assignment. Our purpose here is to improve the writing by reorganizing, adding details, and cutting extraneous material. We're not particularly worried about spelling, handwriting, grammar or punctuation yet. We can clear up those thing later on. Content is what matters now.

We also corrected our Quarter Two math tests. Results are on the gradebook. They weren't bad overall, and it certainly helped me see where we need continuing review and reteaching.

In the afternoon, we finished our kickball unit. We also continued work on the Midway poem. Most groups have finished identifying the rhythm in the poem, using stick notation, and are starting to create melodies. They're improvising these with the xylophones. We should finish those tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, for a number of reasons we had to postpone the LACMA trip. I'm hoping to get it rescheduled for June. We do have a couple other field trips coming up, notably our whale watching trip on March 17.

I will be gone starting Friday for several days. Most of this will be for district-mandated ESL training. I'm finding it hard to be positive and enthusiastic about that, but I'm sure I'll hear something useful.

Homework: (1) Study spelling. (2) Do the second rough draft of the fantasy story as indicated above.