Focused!

It was a great day. I was completely prepared, the students were completely focused:  it couldn’t have been better.

We started with a wordsearch to help with Friday’s spelling test. After that, we went on to our usual opening business. The students were intrigued by today being Doll Day in Japan and learning about this custom. We corrected and discussed the language arts homework, and I think they have the rules for writing titles down pretty solid. We read and discussed the story “Susan LaFlesche Picotte” in the reader. This is a slightly fictionalized account of the life of the first female Native American doctor.

After recess we went to the Tech Center where Ms. Richard worked with the students on Microsoft Word. After lunch, we read and discussed a chapter from the history book. Much of the information here had been already discussed in the documentary we watched, so this went quite smoothly and quickly. I gave the students time to start on their history homework before sending them to PE. We did our usual rotations today. After PE, we did math. Our topic today was converting fractions into decimals and vice-versa. The students seemed to get the idea pretty well.

There’s definitely a bit more homework tonight than the last couple nights, but there will be little if any on Friday. I also gave the students a good bit of time in class to start both the history and math assignments.

Homework:  (1) Do the “Reading Strategies” pages – that’s the one for the post-it notes – for “Susan La Flesche Picotte”. (2) Do the study questions for the same story. (3) Do the “Good Times, Bad Times” study questions. (4) Do “Fractions and Decimals,” envision Math, pages 276-277.