Well, today was certainly an adventure. I woke up in the morning and my view of the valley was obscured by tiny particles of snow (obscure is one of our spelling words this week!). But when I checked the school's website and listened to the radio, school was not called off. I was kind of disappointed, but kind of not since I would be teaching almost the whole day. Overall, the roads weren't all that bad on the way to school. There was a one-lane strip completely clear of snow, thanks to the snowplows that were out, but visibility went down to zero when someone passed us. The snow was so fluffy, all it took was a tiny gust to send it swirling in our direction. Throughout the whole day, students kept asking if school was going to be called off.
The sub was already in the room when I got to school, so we formed our plan of attack for the day. She said it was nice to have a student teacher around because a lot of times, she doesn't know what the students are allowed to do and what they're not.
In reading, the 4th graders are reading Because of Winn-Dixie. When they were reading with a partner, one group called me over to say they found a typo in the book; one of the characters was speaking and left out a word so the sentence didn't sound right. After I thought about it for a while, I realized that the author was trying to make the speaker sound like she had an accent. DING! Teachable moment! I quickly looked up a passage from a book that has a lot of dialect used in dialogue and put it on the smartboard. What followed was a short discussion on the use of dialect and accents in dialogue to make the characters' words more interesting. I read the passage the way it was supposed to sound and then showed the 4th graders what it looked like if spell check was turned on. They were amazed by the red squiggles punctuating the passage. Then they asked me if I typed it. I said no. Although we had a good discussion, I think I created a monster. Their assignment was to write a journal entry from the perspective of one of the characters in the book. Apparently, after our discussion, all the 4th graders thought they had free reign to use incorrect grammar in their paragraphs because they were using "dialect." Hmm, I think I may need to reteach that concept.
In other news, the 5th graders down the hall were presenting their social projects in the afternoon. They needed an audience and who better than the 4th graders who will be doing the same project next year? One student did his project on Abraham Lincoln's assassination. The first thing he told me about his project was that he spelled "assassanation" wrong on his poster. When I asked why he chose this topic, he answered, "Well, Abraham Lincoln is my favorite president." I asked why. "Well, he's really tall... and he did some cool stuff..."
Another student I visited with said he chose the 9/11 plane crash in PA as a topic because he wanted to keep it alive in our hearts. The "Assembly Line" project owner told me he got his inspiration from "a conversation with my bus driver." The most interesting thing he learned about his project was that Henry Ford was not the inventor of the assembly line.
One student who did his project on a battle in the Vietnam War told me he chose his topic because he likes battles and learning about war. When I asked what was the most interesting fact he learned, he didn't say anything. "So, you didn't learn anything interesting about this battle?" Shrug. "Not one thing? Everything was boring?" He shrugged. Somehow I find that incredibly hard to believe. Another student was the opposite. She did a poster on the Statue of Liberty, complete with diorama, and couldn't stop grinning about it. She also told me that the most interesting part of her project was when her cat tried to eat the bushes in her diorama (cotton balls painted green). Delicious!
One of the project requirements was to create a diorama to go with the poster. A few creative students used red pen ink for blood on their soldier action figures; the owner of the "Fall of Rome in WWII" used lego storm troopers with painted helmets to represent soldiers. How creative! I'm sure my 4th graders got loads of ideas for their own projects next year.
After our exciting time in the 5th grade classrooms, we went back to finish the last hour of the day. Throughout the day, the cold in my nose slipped into my throat, causing me to lose my voice. I was doing okay until this last hour of the day. I had to teach science to Mrs. M's class while my 4th graders went to her room for social studies. The students were very interested in our lesson (which was about the muscular system) and behaved pretty well until group work time. Then things went haywire. My voice cracked a couple times and I think the sub noticed because she kind of took over noise control. We both figured out that by clapping a rhythm, the 4th graders knew to clap the rhythm back and stop talking. That worked pretty well, especially since I couldn't talk over them. We switched classrooms and ended the day in a dull roar. I guess teacher's can't control the noise level when Friday Fever comes around.
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