Week of January 31st

We were very lucky to have a visit from children's book author Sara Shacter on Tuesday. She is the wife of a lifelong friend of mine and she came to Central to talk to the little ones about her new book, Just So Willow, and the writing process. I 'convinced' her to come talk to my class as well. We had a great conversation on creating ideas, thinking of and establishing characters, talking about how characters change over time in a book, and the revising-editing-submission process. My students were surprised to learn that her newest book went through 30+ revisions before being published (and my kids whine when they have to go back and revise their first draft :-)). It was a wonderful opportunity for the kids to question a published author about the writing process and to gain some insight into the challenges of getting a book published. Hopefully, my kids are keeping her many drafts in mind as I have asked them to begin to revise and edit their own personal opinion essays.

Our electricity unit started in earnest this week. After leading a K, W, L on electricity, the kids got their boxes that they will use throughout the unit. Each box will have items added and removed on a lesson to lesson basis. The kids never know what's inside them until they open them up. At that point, they are challenged to use the contents for a specific activity. The first challenge was to light a bulb using only three items: a battery, a wire, and a small lightbulb. Most of the groups met with success but there were a couple who came to me to insist that either the battery was dead or the bulb was broken. Nope, so back to the drawing board they went. We will continue to look at circuits and the inside of a lightbulb this week.

Our study of fractions kicked off (we mix up classes for this unit) with looking at adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators; equivalent fractions as well as this skill is needed to add and subtract fractions. We then took a look at mixed numbers and how to place them on a number line. We will move to improper fractions and fractions of a set this week.

The enthusiasm for our reading unit has just increased exponentially as the kids have begun to work on their PSA's. They are taking all of the research that they have done to date on their extreme weather event and are writing a script in order to intelligently inform the public about their event. Conversation became quite animated as each group discussed how best to disseminate the information, how to organize their material, what costumes and props are needed, and of course what name they need for their news team. These will remain a work in progress as the PSA's take a fair amount of time to write, film, and produce in order to meet my high expectations for this project. I so look forward to sharing these with you once they are out of the editing room.

On Wednesday, we will be participating in Global Play Day (globalplayday.com) and I know that the kids are excited to participate. I will be taking a back seat in terms of leading the class and instead will be joining them in their play while still making sure that everyone is safe and included. We will also have an in-school field trip on Thursday in order to get an up close look at magnetism. I am in disbelief that February is already here; I guess it proves the old adage that time flies when you are having fun.