Stull

Wednesdays are, as I have noted before, generally the easy day for the teacher. There's dance, there's Tech Center, and there's PE. Today was a bit of an exception to that rule. It was my Stull.

Now for those of you unfamiliar with the education lingo, a "Stull" is the name given in California public schools to a formal teacher observation and evaluation. It's called a "Stull" because that was the name of the state senator, now long deceased, I'm sure, who sponsored the bill to require regular evaluation of teachers. In LAUSD all permanent teachers receive a formal evaluation every two years. It is just a formality most of the time, but we conscientious teachers always want to make sure that everything looks nice and goes smoothly on day of the Stull visit.

I suppose the students figure all of this out because they are usually pretty cooperative when they see the administrator sitting in the back of the room taking notes. Our students in room 19, of course, went beyond mere cooperative to absolute perfection. We did a guided reading of our latest story in Open Court, "The New Doctor." As usual, we used our post-it notes to help us use our strategies - predicting, connecting, questioning, clarifying, and so on - consciously and effectively. This time we did something a little new and fun, too. I photocopied the story and divided it into parts so we did it as reader's theater. It made the dialogue in the story kind of pop.

A little before 9:30 we stopped our reading and went to the auditorium for the California Dance Institute program. These workshops always begin with a warm up which moves the students from their chairs on to the dance floor. I shot a bit of this today:

After this we went to the Tech Center. Ms. Richards worked with the students again on their keyboarding skills. I was busy doing other things, but they were excited and definitely having a good time. Hmm. Having a good time learning an essential skill. Does school get any better than that?

After lunch we went over the math chapter review to prepare the students for the chapter 16 math test. I am really pleased by how many students are now willing to say, "Could you please explain that problem? I don't get it." At the beginning of the year they were too embarrassed to look dumb in front of their friends to ask those kinds of questions. Now they obviously trust the other students in the class not to judge them for asking a question. That is amazing!

We finished off the day with PE and the math test. The homework below is for today and Thursday and it is not due until Friday. I am doing this so that nobody stays up late tonight. Tomorrow is the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) test and we want the students to be well-rested. But many students would like to do a bit today and a bit tomorrow to have a couple easy days in a row.

Homework: (1) Continue to work on the I-Search paper. The rough draft is due next Monday, February 9. (2) Do spelling sentences using the "Words from Latin" list. There will be a test on these words Friday. (3) Do the three sheets from the Open Court Reading packet: "Commas in a Series", "Making Inferences" and the Medical Terms crossword. These are all pretty easy. (4) Do "Equivalent Fractions," Math, pages 321-323, numbers 2-47 and numbers 51-59. We have not yet discussed this skill, so if students are really confused by this - third grade math only briefly touched on it - hold this one until tomorrow night. We will discuss equivalent fractions tomorrow.