The Countdown is On!

After such a wonderful, summer-like weekend, the children are ready for Summer!  With that in mind, I have planned some fun, and educational, projects to help us wind down the year.

My reading class is working on plays.  The students will form small groups to produce a play.  They will choose parts, stage the action and create sets and costumes.  We are hoping to perform these plays for the second graders before the end of the year.

This morning we read through the three plays so that the children could begin to decide which play they want to perform.

In math we practiced reading a calendar focusing on days after, days before, weeks after and weeks before.  While the students worked on a practice worksheet and went to anchor activities, I worked with a small group calculating elapsed time.  There is a calendar worksheet for homework.

After math, the children went to PE.  Then they enjoyed lunch and outdoor recess.

This afternoon, the students were assigned their plays (based on their requests) and got into their small groups and assigned parts.  After that, I met with each group and discussed the importance of delivering their lines using the appropriate expression based on their character's emotions.  We identified the emotions of each character in the play.  Then the students worked in their groups to read through the plays using correct expression and fluency.  For homework the children are expected to practice reading their assigned part practicing inflection and fluency.

We ended the day with the children working in small groups to create a brochure, on the iPad, using the information they have gathered about the Aztecs.  While the children did this, I met with students individually to review the work they completed on their graphic organizers and ask the child a few questions to assess the knowledge they gained about the Aztecs during their research.