We've got Rhythm

Another good day, as usual. We began with more practice identifying and correctly using proper nouns. We did some independent reading, and the students began keeping their independent reading logs today. This will be a big part of their reading program as the year goes along. We reviewed our thinking maps, and we discussed the Flow Map. This is probably the easiest map, other than drawing the boxes and lines. It helps students sequence events. They did a Flow Map and then wrote a long paragraph about "My Perfect Day." This is usually a fun one for me to read. Students have to be realistic about what they can do in 24 hours, but I give them an unlimited amount of money. I look forward to correcting these! While the rest of the class worked on this, several students went to the auditorium to listen to a presentation from Mr. Mason about orchestra. I hope that most of these children and their families elect to be part of this program. It is such an excellent opportunity.

After recess we reviewed and corrected homework. There were more mistakes than there should have been on the addition and subtraction. For some reason, fourth grade students do not like to regroup numbers. They know they need to do this, particularly for subtraction, but they are sure that they can do this in their heads, and they do not need to cross out numbers and write in other numbers. It looks too messy, even for students whose work is usually messy. So parents, when you are reviewing your child's math work, when you spot errors, check to see if they showed all their work. This will be particularly important with tonight's math! We also continued reading about California's water resources and started a chapter about weather and climate.

After lunch, we did music. We have been looking at beat and meter, but today we started our look at rhythm. We began with some vocal warmups and rhythm clapping. We then took apart one simple jump rope chant to see how certain beats are stressed and how some beats have two syllables while others only have one:

Marco Polo went to France,
Taught the ladies how to dance,
How to bend, how to bow,
Marco Polo teach us how.

Students then had an opportunity to work in their own groups and choose a nursery or jump rope rhyme. They identified the stressed syllables and the beats in each each line. Tomorrow we will be continuing with this adding a simplified version of rhythmic notation and introducing body percussion. Hopefully groups will be ready to perform by Wednesday and we will be putting videos of these on the blog.

We went off to PE with room 17. We mixed classes and did some kickball today. We'll work on a short tournament here. At this point, I had to leave the class to work on clearing up the book room with other members of the textbook committee. This gave the students the last 45 minutes of class to work on homework. Mrs. Garcia, the extraordinarily capable aide from room 17, came by to help the students and supervise. If there seems like a bit of homework tonight, remember that they were given all this time to work on it.

Homework: (1) Sort the spelling words using a tree map. (2) Do "Subtract Across Zeros," Math, pages 42-43. (3) Finish reading "Weather and Climate" in the California book. Do pages 9-14 from the study guide packet.