Monday, December 7

 Hi parents,

I am so happy to report that we had a fantastic day today. After last week, I was ready for the worst, and I let the kids know first thing in the morning that I was going to be much more strict than usual - I wasn't going to let anything fly. To my great relief, the class was so well behaved that I never had to be. They worked harder throughout the day than they did for all of the last week, the silliness was minimal, and I don't think there was any 'tattling' whatsoever. I think we are off to a great start for this week, but I do plan to keep the bar extra high. After today, I am even more confident that the class can, and will, exceed my expectations. 

In the morning, I gave the students eggs to use for the Egg Shelter project. We went out into the garden and the class found good spots for their shelters. We'll check on the eggs each morning and write down observations. We have also included one shelter-less egg named Crazy Edgar to serve as a controlled variable. If Edgar gets frozen, cracked, or stolen by an animal, but the eggs in shelters do not, then we can assume that the shelters were effective.

Crazy Edgar, out in the open

Last week I noticed that a lot of students were rushing through their work, and when I tried to prompt them to go back and make it better, they didn't seem to know what I meant. So today, instead of Weekend Journals, we did a 'work enhancing' activity. For this activity, I gave the students 15 minutes to improve a very mediocre work sample, which was about Bears. Before the students got started, we talked about some of the ways we could improve work in general, such as correcting spelling errors, adding more ideas, colouring pictures, and adding details. Here is the work sample each student was asked to improve...

And here are some of the finished products!

And those are just the first few I picked up - everyone did an excellent job with this task and I am thrilled. It's the first time we've done something like this too - we'll have to do more in the future!

In math, the students did shape colouring sheets, where they had to identify shapes and colour them specific colours. In the afternoon, we did Daily 5, Spelling Practice, and some watercolour painting. The painting is part of our big culture and identity project.

Have a nice day!

Zac