Thursday, 9/7/17

Today, we began with a quick review of the tougher spelling words in each of the students’ lists.  The kids had a “hot potato” style review, where we tossed my little stuffed aardvark around the room to each student.  Although we sometimes focus on writing the words, today we focused on verbally spelling the words.  We will continue to work on List 1 and have an assessment on Tuesday.

We cracked open the handwriting books today, discussing cursive writing.  Although some students are mastering cursive, others are just learning this skill.  We will be working independently through the book, and I will use their writing in each class to help guide their progress in both cursive and print.  On Tuesday, I noticed that a few students were creating their d’s and p’s by starting at the bottom and working their way up.  This may work for now, but it slows down the flow of writing.  We have all had classes where we needed to frantically take notes.  Even with the rise of technology, writing with ease will be an important skill!  

Speaking of skills, today’s writing lesson taught an important one!  The class discussed how to pull out the keywords from a paragraph, and then use those keywords to write the ideas in their own words.  Ms. Hilary worked through an example about butterflies.  The class picked out the important keywords.  Then, the paragraph was erased!  They had to recall the information and use their creativity to make the paragraph their own.

I absolutely loved today’s history lesson.  The class talked about maps, cardinal directions, and using a map key.  After working through a map activity, Ms. Hilary explained how a person's rights are given to them by God, not by the government.  A country’s job is not to own people, but to help them.  The students learned more on this topic in 45 minutes than some children are taught in 12 years of education!

Science began this afternoon!  We will have science each Thursday, and Ms. Smith will be teaching these eager minds!  Their introduction lesson was all about the scientific method.  To step them through the process, they had a geology mini-lesson!  They learned about geologist, volcanologists, lava, magma, data collection, and more.  After their lesson, the students mixed up some good ol’ Georgia red clay and a little water, and created their own volcano!   The class will continue their scientific method lesson at home, and continue to volcanoes next Thursday!