The Day After

Many of us felt pretty tired after last night. I sure was! Fortunately for me, I did not have to teach as much today. But that did not mean that the students did not learn. They sure did!

We began today with our Theater class with Mr. Pratt. We continued our work with stage combat. This is a great lesson for several reasons. First, it covers basic stage movement. Students learn ideas of upstage and downstage, stage right and stage left. Second, students learn that fights on stage are very carefully choreographed and are NOT improvised. That keeps the actors safe. You'll notice in the video above, that the combat moves are identical in each set. And this also helps the students learn that the fighting they see in movies and on television is completely fake. During our lesson, nobody actually ever touches anybody else. And yet, as you can see if the video, it often looks pretty realistic. Third, students learn to develop characters and they do improvise dialogue for these characters. They have fun making insults, but they know that the insults are aimed at the character, not at the fellow-student actor. Finally, the story introduces the students to the story of the Greek hero Theseus who defeats the half-man, half-bull Minotaur in the Cretan labyrinth. Talk about cultural literacy!

After recess, we went to Tech Center where Ms. Richards and Ms. D did more work with the students on either PowerPoint or Internet research. These are two absolutely incredible teachers, and they are doing some a wonderful job in our computer lab. Many thanks to Friends of Third for making this great program possible.

After lunch, we did continued with California history. We finished reading a chapter of Island of the Blue Dolphins, and we practiced our acorn songs and dances. (These are the acorns which grow on oak trees, and they have nothing to do with the voter registration!) We also started a discussion of the first Spanish explorers.

I had to leave early to deal with appliance problems. You know how they will only tell you, "Between 1 and 5 in the afternoon" no matter how much you plead that you have a job. Mrs. Caruso and her assistant, Mrs. Garcia, helped me out here. Many thanks. The students had a good 45 minutes to start on their homework after PE today.

Homework: (1) Do the spelling scramble and wordsearch. (2) Do the subtraction and multiplication worksheets. Be sure to show regrouping. This is a review of third grade skills. (3) Finish reading the chapter on "Explorers" in the California book and do the study sheet. Page numbers are provided next to each study question to make it easier. (4) Do "Variables," Math, pages 168-169.