Wise Old Owls

Our week came to an end with a bit of sunshine, finally. We had a pretty quiet and productive Friday, but we squeezed in a bit of fun, too. We began by checking our homework. We went to the library where Mrs. Koneff gave us a great reading of Chris Van Allsburg's The Widow's Broom, a particularly great story for Halloween. We took our spelling test and we took a couple of reading skills tests. Results for both are already posted on the gradebook.

After recess, we went over to the auditorium for Mr. Lawton's special program. This is, as I mentioned a couple weeks ago, the research for his master's degree.

Today he had the students work on a short song called "The Wise Old Owl" which had a place for improvisation. The students were attentive and really enjoyed the improvisation section.

You can tell how hard they're concentrating. This is part of the mental "flow" that Mr. Lawton is trying to measure.

In the afternoon, we had PE by ourselves - room 9 was on a field trip and room 7 was busy - we just had kickball. That's not good physical education generally, but every now and again it's sort of a treat for the class, the pedagogical equivalent of eating potato chips!

We finished the day with Math. Today we are doing mental math strategies. These are often I find more challenging for the adults to figure out than for the children to perform.

Homework:  (1) Do "Mental Math," envision Math, pages 92-93. (2) Do "Joke" and "Theme Connections". These relate to the "Two Tickets" story.