Of Parallel Circuits and The Cat in the Hat

My grandmother was a great cook, and like so many great cooks she never used recipes. If you asked her how she made something, she invariably talked about a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Today was a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

We finished off the Open Court Reading Test today. Students did the Vocabulary subsection. Usually this has the lowest scores, but the students did amazing well on it. The students who had not finished the writing section last week completed it this morning.

The students listened to the third chapter of By the Great Horn Spoon! and completed their response sheet. They also did Independent Reading, as usual.

After recess, we did our Science investigation. This was fun. The students had been challenged last week to create a simple circuit that would light up two small light bulbs. Most found that they needed two batteries to do this. But today they were told that they had to get the lights to light up brightly with only one battery. It took a little while, but every group figured out a way to do this.

I explained to them that they had created a parallel circuit, and we talked a little about this concept. We ran out of time, so I postponed reading the section of the book about parallel circuits and completing the study guide on this section. The students were heartbroken, as you can imagine, to have a little less work.

After lunch it started to drizzle. I figured that we would probably skip PE, so we corrected our math homework. But then it stopped raining, and Mrs. Caruso and I decided to give them a chance to get some exercise. It all went well for about 15 minutes, but then it started to sprinkle again and we had to come in.

Back in the room, and needing a bit of peace and quiet, I had the students write stories about their masks. This was a very open-ended assignment, and some of the response were amazingly creative, just like the masks themselves. This is another thing which we will finish tomorrow.

Today is “Read Across America,” an annual celebration of the joy of reading. Sponsored by the National Education Association, it is always held on a day close to Dr. Seuss’ birthday. Mrs. Mark and I always combine our classes for a time on this day so that the fourth graders can read to the first graders and so that both grade levels can do wordsearches and other fun little activities.

As you might expect, our students in room 19 took this assignment very seriously, but had a wonderful time with their little buddies in first grade. Here are some snapshots:

Tomorrow is the first day of California Standards Testing for fourth graders. It is the writing part of the test; we will do reading and math in mid-May when all the other grades are also tested.  Please make sure that your child gets to bed nice and early, and gets up in plenty of time to have breakfast and get to school on time.

Homework:  Because students are having an important test tomorrow, homework is cancelled for today.