Gestures

We had one of those days when everything took just a little longer than I expected, and there were a couple of unexpected interruptions. But it was still a good day.

After Independent Work Time, we had a good discussion of the meaning of September 11th and the terrorist attacks. Students were fairly knowlegeable, but we did work to correct a couple misconceptions and fill in some factual background. We then went on to go over some of the reading skills for the first Open Court story such as comparing and contrasting and identifying story elements. We had a little fun here by pantomiming the vocabulary words.

We spent a good deal of time going over the math. Rounding is a tough skill, and while some of the students are clearly doing well with it others are struggling. We postponed the math test and gave another day of review to make sure they do well on the chapter 2 test.

The fun part of the day was art, even if it was annoyingly interrupted by a fire drill. We studied gesture drawing, and talked about how artists can us quick line stetches to suggest motion. We did a few practices, and then they worked in small groups posing and sketching each other. It was pleasantly loud and disorganized, and they clearly had fun with this. After they finished with a few sketches, they colored these in and used a watercolor was to provide a background. We'll have pictures of these on the blog soon.

Homework: (1) Do "More practice," p H33. This is in the very back of the math book. (2) Do the rest of the Frisby packet. There is a crossword puzzle to help review vocabulary, worksheet about cause and effect, and some study questions. (3) There is an OPTIONAL spelling wordsearch. The words are the ones we have been studying all week. This is just a fun review for the test tomorrow.