Fun and Easy

Today was a pretty fun day for the students, and a pretty easy day for the teacher. We started off with our Theater class with Mr. Pratt. The students worked today more today on improvisation skills. After leading the class through some warmups and reviewing the basic improvisation rules they learned last week, students were paired up for two improvs. The first had students pretending they on a playground where one students was on a swing and the other student wanted to take turns. The second dealt with a child who came home with an animal which he or she wanted to adopt as a pet. In both cases, Mr. Pratt stressed the idea that all characters have objectives or things that they want to accomplish, and that these objectives tend to create some kind of conflict. The essence of drama, students learned, is that the characters have to overcome or resolve this conflict. In improvisation, some kind of negotiation is the best way to do this. By the way, that often works in real life too.... I filmed a few of these later in the day and after I'm finished editing them I'll post them here on the blog again. It may be a couple days, however.

After recess, we went to Tech Center. As most of you know, our technology program at Third Street was not all that successful last year, and the booster club, Friends of Third, has worked to improve it by hiring a near teacher and an aide. They have also provided these teachers with a decent budget to buy software and other needed supplies. Today was our first day there, and I think that the computer lab will be a favorite activity for students this year. Ms. Saran Richards, the new teacher, greeted the students and went over rules and expectations. She then had them work on an educational website while she observed their skill levels in preparation for some upcoming lessons.

After lunch, we did this and that. We checked homework. I filmed the improvs. We went out to PE. We came back and discussed what they needed to get accomplished by Friday. I then gave them a solid 45 minutes to get started so they could take home as little as possible. Most worked very, very hard!

Homework: (1) Finish the music paper for Mr. Lawton. Finish the 8 stories for "All About Me" and do the cover page. (2) Do "Quiz Time!" paper over Island of the Blue Dolphins, chapters 1-5. (3) Do Math, pages 92-93, numbers 1-14. Do Math, pages 94-95, all problems.