Thursday, January 27

 Hi parents,

We had a pretty good day today. In the morning, we did a fun activity about tone and 'bias' in writing, and the significant impact it can have on the impression readers get. I gave half of the class a paragraph about a nice teacher who let his students stay in at recess to learn in a peaceful, quiet environment, and the other half of the class got paragraphs about a teacher who forced his students to stay in and work through the entire recess. The students were not aware that there were two different versions of the story circulating, so when we had a class discussion, they were pretty shocked to hear the positive or negative things their classmates had to say about this teacher!

We talked about how certain words, phrases, and images can work to portray events in certain ways, while still technically retaining factual accuracy. It was a cool lesson! 

We started to learn about division today, by watching the NumberBlocks episodes The Lair of Shares and Divide and Drive. Both are fantastic. Division is often an easy skill for students to pick up because kids tend to have an inherent understanding of how to divide, because dividing and 'fairness' go hand in hand. If you give two kids 20 candies and ask them to divide them up, they'll probably get get it right.

In the afternoon, we practiced division a bit more, did Daily LA, and played "Raindrops" in gym. We also played a full class math game, and read Chapter 7 of Droon.

Have a nice night!

Zac