A Terrific Thursday

Our play was a great experience, but in order to find time to practice and perform we had to drop a few things for a while. One of them was Literature Circles. Today we finally got back on track and the students were again reading their books with fellow students in small groups. I provided the students with a little outline to guide their reading. We used the strategies which we learned as part of our Open Court Reading – predicting, checking predictions, connecting, and so forth – and which we have also used during our Independent Reading. Students were quite involved with their books as you can see from the pictures below.

After literature circles, the students started Writer’s Workshop. We’re starting to have students finish some of their final drafts. As promised, I’ll publish some of the best of them. I thought this one was both sweet and clever.

Newspaper

Just call me L.A. Times. Life as a newspaper is really hard. And I mean really hard. Newspapers are treated with no respect! They throw us off like we’re a piece of paper … oh wait I am a piece of paper. Anyway I’ll tell you my story.

I’m peacefully riding on the newspaper boy’s bike. I was always lucky so I didn’t have to worry about being thrown off. But then I get thrown off! I was scared. Then I saw my worst nightmare. A huge Rottweiler with sticky drool coming out of its mouth. He looked at his new toy. I panicked. Next thing you know I’m all ripped up. The owner comes out disappointed. He throws me into the filthy trashcan.

The next day the garbage man came. During the ride I met other newspapers. Finally we got dropped off at the junkyard.

A hobo came along delighted to find newspapers. It took me a while to figure out that was me.

That was all 60 years ago. Now I have found my fellow relatives. I always tell my grandchildren my story. They love it.

After recess we worked on the Quarter 3 Math Test. This one of the controversial periodic assessments. United Teachers-Los Angeles has called for teachers to boycott the tests as a huge waste of money. I am inclined to agree with the union, but at our school we discussed this and came to a compromise of sorts. We decided to administer the tests, but not to submit the results to the district. We will scores the tests ourselves – not that hard since you just have the students exchange and correct test booklets – but we are not sending the Scantron forms to the Local District 3 office (or wherever they go). Again, it is not really much of a sacrifice for us and I do not know anybody who finds the test analysis reported by the Princeton Review people to be useful at all. I will have our students results on the on-line gradebook.

We did more music after lunch focusing on the idea of creating melodies today. The students wrote down their birth dates first in regular form and then as an 8 digit number. Mine is below:

July 4, 1957

07041957

We then changed these numbers into the notes on a pentatonic scale. O and 5 became C, 1 and 6 became D, 2 and 7 became E, 3 and 8 became G, and finally 4 and 9 became A. My birthday then became the following sequence of notes:

C E C A D A C E

Each student did this, and then were took turns performing our “Birthday Melodies” as a student provided a simple ostinato accompaniment.

We also started a new physical education program today. The ever-capable Akiko Morrison, Mac’s mom, was our instructor. She gave the students some background on the different muscle groups and the work each did. She emphasized that the heart is the most important muscle, constantly working.

She led our students in a vigorous workout. They started with a great running exercise. The students were paired up. The students ran for two minutes and then walked for a minute. They repeated this pattern a couple times. The partners had to stay together as the went around the track. They could pass other runners, but only if both partners were faster than the runners ahead of them.

The students also were instructed in the finer points of doing sit-ups and push ups. Again, they worked in partners to make sure they were doing the exercises correctly.

We had such a great time and worked so hard for at PE that we did not have time for the History test. The students, as I am sure you can imagine, were inconsolable….

Homework: (1) Do spelling sentences. (2) Do “Relationships,” Math pages 466-467. (3) Also do “Review/Test” and “Cumulative Review,” pages 468-469 in the same book.