Busy and Artsy

It was a busy day in room 19 today! As usual, we started out with the students reading silently while I checked to see if their homework was completed. After 15 to 20 minutes of reading, they wrote in their journals about what they had been reading and tried to apply some of their reading strategies. We went on to correct and discuss the study questions over "Sarah, Plain and Tall." I then had the students work on final drafts of the "My Favorite Stuff" composition. This will be part of a compilation of Thinking Map inspired compositions which will be made into a book - in time, I hope, for Back to School Breakfast.

After recess, we did some Science again. The students made three hills of potting soil in their foil trays. They left one pile dry, slightly moistened another, and drenched the third. After this, they placed isopods in the trays and watched for the favored environment for the roly polies and the sow bugs.

We check out math right after recess, and then we did art. Our art lesson today focuses on both line drawing and point of view. First, we began by looking at a couple of pictures, one by the great Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel and another by a contemporary American, Paul Goodnight. Both were pictures of children playing. As we examined the pictures, we talked about "bird's eye" vs "ant's eye" points of view. We then went out to the playground where the students took turns playing and drawing each other playing.

Returning to the classroom, the students did "final drafts" of their pictures, first in pencil and then in sharpie.

Homework:  (1) Finish the brace map if necessary and then do the rough draft of "My Favorite Meal". Be sure to have a topic sentence. There should be good details with adjectives and specific nouns. The salad should be made of "cool, green, crunchy lettuce" and "sweet red tomatoes". (2) Do spelling sentences for words 11-20. (3) Finish the Rain Forest questions. We started on these in class. (4) Do "Subtracting," envision Math, pages 40-41, EVEN only. Again, show all work on a separate sheet of paper while putting the answers on the answer sheet.