Back in the saddle

Hello,

It was nice to get our afternoon back.  A few students got called out to do make-ups, but it sure felt good to have a little time for reading, writing and science.  We are now going to try to wrap up some of the loose ends that are still dangling.  Geography picture dictionaries need to get finished by tomorrow.  Recipes for play dough will go home with the hope that we will get some brought in on Monday and Tuesday.  The goal is to give students the chance to show off what they know by creating islands with multiple landforms.  I realize that not every family will be able to, but I would appreciate it if you could help make a batch or two of the dough. 

We did a pass it on writing game this morning to get our pencils moving across the paper.  Students wrote a sentence of a story and then passed on the story to someone else.  I was impressed with our first attempt at this.  Often I have story "hijackers" who try to turn every story that passes their eyes into an intergalactic shoot out.  That didn't happen.  I also usually have a lot of bathroom humor or graphic violence.  Also not a problem today.  They did a good job coming up with topics, staying on topic, and interjecting the stories with some type of problem to make the story more interesting.  Bravo!  We'll do it again from time to time, and it is fun to see the improvement, but this was a very good launching point. 

My math class got into rounding numbers to the nearest ten, hundred or thousand.  I played a squirrel crossing a highway to illustrate this.  On one side is the the next highest ten (or hundred or a thousand).  On the other side is the nearest lower ten.  Students had to decide whether the squirrel should round up, (continue to cross the road) or round down, (turn around and go back.)  If the squirrel chooses wrong, he turns into roadkill.  We took volunteers to play the signs on the side of the road holding up the nearest tens, hundreds or thousands.  I only played the squirrel once before getting volunteers for that position.  We only had one roadkill incident.  Luckily the oncoming traffic was imaginary.

Math continues to be a bit of poking and prodding to see what they know.  We are currently doing a combination of subtraction, time and rounding.  We begin each day with Rocket Math which is an individualized program that I really like that measures when students have their facts down.  Each student gets two minutes to study their facts and then takes their daily one minute test.  Their goal is based on how fast they can write.  They should be able to answer math facts (like 3 + 7) as fast as they can write.  If not, then the fact isn't automatic yet.  As they pass each test, the next one adds a few more facts.  I handed out thirteen different tests today for my twenty math students.  It is a bit more of a pain to grade, but I find that it is definitely worth the extra time.  Multiplication Rocket math will start at the end of the month, regardless of where they are in their addition and subtraction facts.  We will return to those after they have their multiplication facts down.

I can't believe that it is almost Friday.  The week and the year are going too fast and I'm feeling inadequate.  We have some work to do.  I'm going to have to get them to buckle down to get to where we need to go.

Have a good night.

Mr. Shea