On Monday, we finished up the force of motion lesson, having the actual competition in the hallway for the fliers and the rollers and their inventions. This was just fun to see the final products and the distance that each one went. This week I sat back in with the Amish reading group and they began to read about the Amish lifestyles.
On Tuesday, we came in and the students were going over their standardized testing booklets for reading. They had done this page before and were just now grading it. After they graded it, they went ahead and did the next 2 pages. When they had finished, we broke up into 3 groups and went over them. Most of the students did fine on this section, which was reading a story and then answering questions, but they did have dificulty with the last question. An encyclopedia entry had been given about this guy from the story and then the question was What WOULDN’T you find in an encyclopedia entry? Only one of my 6 students got it right, because they read the question as WOULD. So we discussed that and I told them that when they are taking tests, they can underline words like that so they know which one to use. As soon as the students realized it was wouldn’t, they were like OH THEN IT’S C, so they knew the answer, but read the question wrong.
On Wednesday we worked on the Long E sound and the students had to come up with 5 examples in 5 categories; ee, ea, y, e at the end of a word or syllable, and other. The students did a great job coming up with different examples of all the different types of Long E sounds. Some did have dificulties with grasping the concept of it HAD to have that sound in it at first, but finally they did understand that all the words must have that sound in them. One example that I loved and thought was really great was for the other category, a boy put down Wii, which I think shows that he is applying his everyday life to the classroom and it’s a great example of thinking outside the box when it comes to thinking about all the different words kids know. After this, the students did a little publishing their writings, but then broke into their reading groups. Today’s reading group was very interesting because we were talking about religious traditions of the Amish and Mrs. McCoy was asking the children if they had any types of traditions simular to the Amish, but a lot of the students said that they either don’t go to church, or they only go on holidays. I thought this was interesting in itself, but then Mrs. McCoy told me on Thursday that one student even said (after I left) that he belonged to the Mormon church, which really surprised me. This goes to show that you never know everything about your students and there’s always room to grow with your teacher-student relationship.
On Thursday the students did writer’s notebook again, this time with the book Nicholas Bentley Stoningpot III by Ann McGovern. It was a very cute book about a boy that was shipwrecked and that he didn’t want to go back to his life because his parents were billionaires and didn’t care about him. The students were encouraged to write this week sequels or “what really happened” stories to share. We heard lots of stories of while he was at sea or he finally made it off the island. The students did a great job connecting with the story and really enjoyed that. After writers notebook, we broke into reading groups again.
