OLDER CLASS
This week is moving up week, so I had all of the students give me feedback in the form of a journal or letter writing. I was pleased to see that the mover uppers were having a good time and enjoying being in the class and that the older classers were feeling good about this new mix for next year. I started the day off on Tuesday with 30 questions that were designed to get people talking and find out more about each other. Some sample questions were: Have you ever ridden a snowmobile? Are you afraid of spiders? Do you have blue eyes? We then played a game with students getting credit for guessing the number of people who answered yes to these questions. You will be interested to know that only two people are thinking about tattoos at this point.
I’m afraid in my excitement of getting prepared for the week, I made the Tuesday schedule very full. I rearranged that work and spread it out over the following two days. The schedule included a new Scope Magazine in which we read the articles, mini play, and did five worksheets. The schedule also included math work, making another flower for our new display area in the stairwell, music, phys ed, and reading partners. We also had five more history presentations. These new presentations were on malaria, Industrial Revolution, Cleopatra – Egyptian inventions – and accomplishments, European colonization of America, and Anasazi. We have learned so much from the information that has been presented by taking notes and answering people’s questions about the material. At this point, I have so many people who want to present that we are working on creating time for that in our busy schedule. I couldn’t be more pleased with the effect this project is having and how it is giving us all information that we will use in the future.
This week we started our study of the play Twelfth Night. We are doing this to get ready for our sleepover next Thursday when we will view the video made by the Globe Theatre Company. This week I gave the class sheets I created with pictures of characters to help them with this rather complicated plot. Of course this play includes many of the things we have come to expect of Shakespeare and those things are marriages, people switching identities, people taking other names, love, entanglements, and misunderstandings. This week in addition to using the sheets, we watched an animated video made by MTV. Next week we will have the opportunity to do a 20 minute mini play of Twelfth Night and read a children’s version of the play. We have had a “beautiful week” which is a quote from one of my student’s journal writings.
We will be having a sleepover at school. This sleepover will be handled in the same manner as when we went to see Richard III with just a few changes. On that Thursday we will have a normal day with the only exception being watching the movie Star Wars so that we can then begin reading the Star Wars book in Shakespearean words. We tried reading this book before when I realized that many of my students had never seen the movie. During the day, Sara will take the various cooking groups to help prepare food for the evening. We will have an early dinner and then some free time before we sit together to watch Twelfth Night. The boys can put all of their stuff in the main classroom and the girls will again have the Quilt Room. In the morning they will all have breakfast together and then for lunch, since it is Friday, people should bring in money for pizza or subs as usual. I am really looking forward to this. If you have any questions please call me.
MIDDLE CLASS
Middle classers have been very helpful showing the moving uppers the “ropes” although they are all enthusiastic and capable.
We have been doing nature drawing and painting of the spring flowers in our yard. The mover uppers made drawing journals and participated in a water color activity. R did a great job of leading the mover uppers in a mini class on the symmetry work we have done and other middle classers have helped by reading, helping with research and demonstrating some online math sites we are using.
S very kindly included moving uppers in his independent project on coins and Helen loaned them recorders to practice during the week.
We have really enjoyed having them.
We have rescheduled the Kateri trip for next week.
YOUNGER CLASS
This week is Moving Up Week. I have sent my 4 third year children to Kathey’s class for the week, and we have 2 visitors who will be joining our class in September. The third year students are having a wonderful time in Kathey’s class. They have checked in with me numerous times to let me know that everything is going great! The Little Class is much different without them, but we are having a great time.
Last Friday we had our reader’s theater performance of “Mr. Putter and Tabby Walk the Dog”. It was lots of fun!! The kids all worked really hard on costumes, props, and scenery then they acted out the story with me as narrator. We have started a new readers theater production this week. We’ve read the book “Salamander Ball” twice, decided what was going on in each scene, listed the characters, chose characters, and found or made props, costumes, and scenery. Tomorrow we will finish getting everything together, and have our performance, with me as narrator once again.
On Tuesday, we went on a nature scavenger hunt. The kids had a great time, and were really focused on looking for the different items on the list. As soon as one child found something they made sure to show everyone else. We found some very interesting items in addition to the ones on my list. The most interesting was a bird’s wing. We then had a discussion about what could have happened to the bird. As a class we decided that most likely the bird was caught by a cooper’s hawk or maybe a red tailed hawk. We also spent some time talking about poison ivy and how to identify it.
We played math games, read with partners, worked on math activities, had music with Helen and phys ed with Chris, and had older class reading partners. It’s been a very full week!
Next week we start our final show and tell topic. Please help your child find a joke or riddle to share with the class. I sent an email home a few days ago with a list of which week each child is assigned.
We will be taking a trip to Kateri next week.