Not a Moaning Monday

It was another happy and productive day in room 19.

We worked on vocabulary strategies in the morning. Before they arrive in kindergarten, children learn thousands of words simply intelligently guessing at them. Unfortunately, as they grow older, students learn to be afraid of making mistakes. So they start to simply skip the unfamiliar words instead of trying to figure them out. A few, of course, try to compulsively look up the words or ask an adult, but they soon find out that this is just too frustrating. So we try to help them relearn the skill of using the other words in a sentence along with their prior knowledge to make a good guess at the meaning of the word.

We talked about the easiest of the Thinking Maps, today, the Flow Map. This helps structure sequencing of events. The students were asked to imagine what their “perfect day” would be like and to write about it. They were allowed to be anywhere in the world and have as much money as they needed, but had to be realistic about what could actually be seen or done in 24 hours. I’m looking forward to reading the rough drafts!

In the afternoon we did more music. One of the techniques I use with the students involves elements of the Dalcroze Eurhythmics approach. In Eurhythmics, the students learn to use their bodies in order to express important musical concepts and skills. Today they imagined that their hands formed pendulums and they swung back and forth to the underlying beat of a simple tune played on a piano. This was fun as you can see.

We went out to PE in the afternoon and then did our usual math.  Mrs. Mark had a funeral to attend, so I watched her 23 students in addition to my 32. 55! Whew! As I remarked to my mother later in the day, it was like teaching Catholic school in the 1950’s.  But everything went fine.

Homework:  (1) Write the spelling words in alphabetical order on a separate sheet of paper. (2) Do the “Bodies of Water” study sheet. (3) Do “Rounding,” Envision Math, pages 24-25. Also do the activity on the back of the answer sheet.