Quick!

Most Tuesdays go by quickly but this seemed unusually fast. If only I could say the same for the faculty meeting that followed….

But before we go over what we did today, here is something I did not mention yesterday. We are working on perspective in art right now. It’s a HARD skill for fourth graders who are able to distinguish symbolic from realistic art, but have a difficult time making art that looks like the real work. Part of that is technical skill, of course, but a great deal of it is learning to see things somewhat differently. We went over a number of different ways for creating depth and distance in art. One of them is the idea that lines going away seem to come closer together (even though the actual distance does not change). This student could see this in a football field. 

Today we started out the day in the Tech Center. Students are completing their biomes project where they researched and wrote about the six major ecosystems of the world. They really concentrated as well on learning how to size and place pictures in a Word document. Returning to the classroom, we checked, corrected, and discussed homework. We started literature circles today and the students were assigned to specific books. You’ll be hearing more about this. 

After recess, the students worked with Mr. Pratt in the auditorium on Annie. The play is coming along quite well, but we are working with the students to speak lines more effectively and to use their faces and bodies to react to the words of other actors. In this scene, Oliver Warbucks, center, is meeting Annie, second from the right, for the first time. 

We skipped reading buddies today because Mr. Pratt was generous enough to give us an extra 25 minutes and we went to second lunch instead. In math, we are introducing the students to functions. They’ll be graphing them soon! What amazing things students are doing now in elementary school. I’m not sure I did that until ninth grade.

Homework:  (1) Do spelling words 6-10 (2) Do Area and Perimeter Review 2 (3) Also do What’s X? 2 on the back. (4) Do pages 420-421 in the enVision Math book.