Wednesday and Thursday, January 9-10

I was out yesterday afternoon for an appointment and there was a substitute. In the morning, for Math, we practiced fractions and probability. We figured out fractions of a square, created our own and solved others' as well as played various fraction and probability games. According to the sub, the classroom behavior was not good in the afternoon and it seems that from her notes, she will not be returning anytime soon-if ever. The students agreed that their behavior was not great and so today we went back to the basics. Maybe we got a little too comfortable and our behavior mirrored that. So, today, we spent the majority of the day in our seats, working mostly, independently. We also kept our shoes on instead of getting comfy and ate snack two times instead of whenever. Boys also have had difficulty with playing in the restroom so now boys may not use the restroom as a group. Hopefully, these changes will change the behaviors as well, as it did today. We had a wonderful day! Tomorrow will be the same and we may slowly get back to the way things were as long as the behaviors continue on the positive. Academically, students read different versions of Cinderella to focus on the setting and its importance to a story, built their stamina by reading independently and met with their book clubs. They also continued writing their personal narratives and in Social Studies, they got into groups to create skits to show what the new settlers experienced.

Today, in Math, we did an experiment and practiced creating and comparing predicted results to actual results. We have a few more things to work on so our assessment over probability and re-assessment over fractions will probably be later next week. We followed Mary on her journey with the Delaware in Beaded Moccasins and tried to improve their cadence and words per minute as well as stamina with independent reading in Reader's Workshop. (Ask your kiddo about cadence and stamina...) We continued with the writing process for our personal narratives in Writer's Workshop. In Social Studies, we practiced our skits and will be 'performing' them tomorrow.