Work When We Work. Play When We Play.

Spanish- Practice, practice, practice! Today was another day of practice for next week's Mexican restaurant night. As you could probably guess, the bullfighting presentation is the funnest part of class! The kids are learning the art of bullfighting... and enjoying taking turns being the bull! Can't wait to serve our families a Mexican dinner and show them all that we have learned!

Spelling- Our spelling list this week is full of words from history. They completed a worksheet that helped them define each of the words.  Although the spelling may not be as much of an issue on this list, the vocabulary seems to be...  Keep working on them at home!

Grammar- We have already learned about adverbs that describe verbs, but today, we learned about adverbs that describe adjectives and other adverbs.  These do not tell us how, when, where, or how often (like the ones we previously learned).  These tell us "to what extent".  For example, in the sentence "He ran very quickly.", "very" tells us to what extent he ran quickly.  We began diagramming these adverbs, as well. 

Math- We have been studying division for a couple weeks now, and today was a day to go back and review what we have learned. There is a big skill that will help tremendously with long division. Multiplication! Once we have those multiplication tables memorized, it will become easier to get through the division problems. Keep on working at home! After going through some problems together, we played a multiplication review card game. To drill the multiplication tables, the kids drew a card, rolled a dice, and multiplied the two together. The student with the highest product collected each players card. It's a great (non-boring) way to do multiplication!

Science- The class has been discussing weather recently in science, reading, and even writing classes. The kids reviewed the terms that they have learned so far by matching up vocabulary cards with the definitions. (It's amazing how taking words off of a “worksheet”, cutting them out, and walking across the room to match them makes a review so much more fun!) We continued the lesson by discussing the difference between weather and climate, learning about air masses and fronts, and exploring the factors that affect climate. The students cut out paper spirals. Our heat source had a short and wouldn't turn on, so we will be taking our spirals home to do the demonstration! Hold the spiral 15cm above a heat source (la light bulb works well). Discuss what causes the spiral to spin!

Social Studies- Today's class was all about the First Continental Congress.  Mr. Dennis brought in a skit for the kids to read through (with silly hoity-toity voices, no less!)  They learned about the Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, and George Washington's roles in the First Continental Congress, and the unified response from the colonies to the Intolerable Acts. 

Reading/Writing- We finished "The Earthshaking Earthquake Mystery"!  After reviewing our vocabulary words and talking about what we liked about the ending, I introduced the class to their next writing assignment.  They will be writing a book report in the form of a detailed letter. Their letter will be written as if they were going to send it to a movie producer. The purpose of the letter is to inform the movie producer about the awesome book that they just read and convince him or her that it should be made into a movie!  The paper needs to describe and tell about the book, give reasons why they liked the book, explain why it would make a great movie, and give ideas for how to make this into a movie!

After pumping the class up about their awesome assignment, the kids began their brainstorming session during class.  They each worked incredibly hard on their lists and/or graphic organizers.  I am trying to help them learn that the more that they brainstorm and capture on paper, the easier writing their rough draft will be!  This class, that did not start out liking to write (and still will not admit that they do), sat in total silence and brainstormed, pencils flying, for over 30 minutes.  Many of them even started rough drafts!  We have come such a long way this year!

A fierce battle ensued.

Every good battle scene deserves a bow.

One thing that I have learned to appreciate this school year, even more than I already did, was the value of loosely organized play. When left to their own imaginations, these kids can create, explore, reenact, invent, and self-direct. So often, educators forget that certain education can also happen without the outside influence of lessons, projects, or plans. With a subtle nudge, these kids spent their 20 minute free time in a completely adult-free world of pretend... that involved a pretty impressive storyline that I could describe as a combo of Greek mythology and McBeth. There was a king, a king's son, a guard, animals, and a few swords created from a ruler with a wadded up strip of paper towel through the hole to form a crossguard. There was a fierce battle with an imaginary cyclopes and possibly, if I understood correctly, a minotaur. We learn. Play helps process. I love it.