Heavy Heart

I started out the day with a very heavy heart...I was born and bred on the 'Skins...I remember watching games with my dad when we lived in New Jersey...they are truly an extension of our family...so, as you can imagine, the news hit hard...

But working with the children this morning really lifted my spirits. :-)

During math, I was at a meeting but the children worked with Mrs. Starkey on solving word problems using the measurement skills we are working on in unit 2. Tomorrow, after a formative, we will continue using our skills to solve word problems. For homework, the children need to complete their classwork (if they didn't in school) and they have a TWO sided area and perimeter worksheet.

In reading we continued our focus on informational text. We had a great discussion regarding the purpose of our reading being the driving force behind was informational was deemed important versus informational that was interesting. We worked on this together and then the children worked on it independently in their reading logs.

For example, we read the book Life on the African Savannah, with the focus questions of "what animals live in the Savannah" and "what do you call a baby zebra". So, only information that answered these questions is important information...all other information becomes interesting as it does not address our focus.

At their seats, the children were given two new questions and were told to create a third question. Then they used the same book to locate important information that answered the question. I was so pleased by the children's understanding of the focus questions dictating the purpose for reading and thus, which information was important.

While the children worked independently, Mrs. Isaacs worked with some students individually while I met with small groups.

Following lunch and recess, I continued to meet with small groups while the children worked on their reading response logs AND editing their writing pieces.

JGB 1 began a new story called the Monster Who Grew Smaller...we did a text opener in which we the children imagined they were taking a trip on a train and they had to think about what would worry them about the impending trip. Then we read the story together. For homework, they need to reread the story.

The FLASH group met with me and we discussed prefixes, suffixes and base (or root) words. We created a chart in which we identified words in the Julia Alvarez book and then broke the words into parts. For homework they need to read for 15 minutes - free choice.

The ROY group has now been split into two...one group began a Junie B. Jones book with me. We read chapter one in group and they need to reread it for homework. The other part of the group will be reading a Junior Great Books story called the Master Cat. This group did a text opener with me. We read and discussed a poem called the Cat of Cats. They need to read for 15 minutes tonight - free choice.

We began our second unit in Social Studies today...it is called Cities of the Present. We began by discussing systems of transportation and focused on the airplane. We talked about the various elements that are needed such as a plane, fuel, air traffic controllers, maintenance crew, etc.