Improvisation

Today started out, as our Wednesdays will until Winter Break, with our theater class. We had the usual fantastic time with Mr. Pratt. Our topic today was improvisation. We began, like usual, with the pantomime exercise to the song, "Be Our Guest." After that, the students reviewed the vocabulary and key concepts from the previous lesson. We also practiced pantomime and the cooperation skills learned last week in the Machine exercise by doing tug-of-war. (Of course, the rope was invisible!) After that, Mr. Pratt discussed the idea of improvisation and the key rule, do not deny! The students then paired off to do their own improvisations. You will see a couple examples of these shortly when I edit and upload the video. These concerned a customer coming into a shoe store to buy some new shoes and also bargaining over the price. The students had a great time, and maybe learned some haggling skills which could come in handy on a visit to a foreign country!

Later in the day, we corrected homework, finished reading the "Mae Jemison" story, and we did a little PE. (We did skip running laps, however, because of the miserable heat.) We also started reading Island of the Blue Dolphins today. Again, a big thank you to the parents who contributed to the class fund which allowed us to buy copies of this book for each child. We had a math test. More fun for the students, we had a drum circle exercise to work on listening skills. This is called "audiation" in the music pedagogy world, and it's considered the foundation of music education. But if I told the students that maybe they would not have enjoyed it so much....

Most of you have already received an email giving access to our gradebook. If you haven't yet, let me know. It will take a few days to get the backlog of grades posted, but I promise you when the system is up and running you will love it!

Homework: (1) Write the rough draft of the fantasy store. The students have already done some prewriting in their Inquiry Journals and they can use these to help them write the first draft. Please write only on the front side of each paper and skip lines. The rough draft should be a minimum of three pages long. (2) Do the Unit 1 review in Math, pages 76-77.