Dramatic

We returned pretty refreshed from our three day weekend. A number of our students observed the Yom Kippur holy day, while others used the extra day to play with friends or go to someplace fun like Knott’s Berry Farm.

It was a quiet and productive day. We changed seats today so people could have an opportunity to work with some new people. We’ll do that every three weeks or so. We worked on our thinking maps, today doing the tree map. Students wrote a paragraph about their favorite people, places, or things. Those who finished this early had an opportunity to start on some of the language arts homework. We did math after recess, and our lesson today was adding with regrouping. It was old hat for the students, and they seem to have this skill well-mastered.

The only real new thing today was we had our first theater arts class. Our teacher for drama this year is Suzanne Nichols. As most of you know, John Pratt, who taught theater here for the last couple years, is now a full-time staff member at Third Street. Ms. Nichols had been a teacher at Normandie Avenue School. She gave our students a very structured and detailed introduction to the ideas of the “tools of an actor” and led them through some great pantomime exercises. They had a good time and learned a lot. We’ll been writing about this experience in a journal tomorrow morning.

Homework:  (1) Do the spelling jumble. (2) Do the Open Court Reading pages – word knowledge, vocabulary, and “The History You are Making”. (3) Do “Adding Whole Numbers,” Envision Math, pages 37-39. Students are encouraged to do the whole math assignment, but only the odd problems are required.