Read Arounds

I have a vague feeling of doom every time that the day begins with precipitation, but everything went quite well today in room 19. We learned a lot and we had some fun, too.

We started off checking and correcting homework. The scores for the last couple days are posted on the gradebook. Students did quite well with prime and composite numbers. A few did not complete the poem/song lyrics assignment for Mr. Lawton, and they will need to get that done tonight in addition to any other work. We then finished reading “Birth of a Baby Food” – not a deeply fascinating story, but a good illustration of how people can make a fortune doing things which make the lives of others less stressful and more productive.

After that, I split the class into groups of five and the students read the stories they wrote on Monday to each other.

This is a technique called a “read around group” (or RAGs, if you are a connoisseur of educational acronyms). Each student reads his or her own paper; the other members of the group are supposed to give each writer at least one specific compliment and offer one suggestion or area of clarification. It seems easy, but the students find giving constructive feedback surprisingly hard. The students started revisions – second rough drafts – after they finished their group discussions.

We successfully avoided rainy day schedule, and the students all went to recess as scheduled. YES! (Not their reaction….) After recess we went to the Tech Center where Ms. Richard worked with them on both typing skills and their business plan power point presentation.

After lunch we had our first read through of the play.   We have a lot of interest in the various parts, and already some strong contenders. We went out to PE. As I mentioned on Monday, room 37 is now going us for PE, and I worked with those students to teach them to warm up routines. We had about 15 minutes of free choice activities, and then the students washed up.

We finished the day in the auditorium where Ms. Limb went over the plans for the new Student Council. A lot of our students are interested in running for office!  It should be great!

Homework:  (1) Finish the revision (second rough draft) of the holiday/vacation story. (2) Do the spelling wordsearch. (3) Do the study questions for the “Baby Food” story. (4) Do pages 182-184 in the math book as well as the test prep section.