Good Learning Day

Today was a good learning day.

This week's reading theme has been inferring.  We did a little extra read-aloud today, and while we were reading I stopped a few times to ask them questions. One of those times, a 6th graders said, "Hey Miss H, this is just like what we were doing yesterday... making inferences!"  Yes! Score one for the teacher!  Since we've been talking about inferences, my students have been much more conscious of them, even in other subject areas.

The 7th and 8th graders learned about Protists in science today, specifically slime molds.  We watched a 10 minute video about slime molds (how they grow, eat, move, etc.); the last half of the video wasn't as interesting as the first half, so my plan had been to stop halfway through and keep going, but my students wouldn't let me.  "Can't we keep watching? This is really interesting!"  Hey, if they're interested, why not?  At the end of science time they didn't want to stop!  Of course, all their questions and inquiry (and the second half of the video) meant we didn't get as far through the powerpoint as I'd hoped, but I'd much rather take longer to teach a topic and keep my students interested as opposed to sticking with the timeline but have my students bored out of their minds/not interested at all.

The 5th and 6th graders had a good social studies day too.  We're learning about logging camps in MN and today's lesson was about how they got the logs from the logging camps to the lumber mills (via river).  The MN historical society has a website that goes in depth on each of MN's main industries, so we took the last few minutes of class to look/listen to the comic and see more historic photos of the time.  Here's the link if you want to see for yourself.  On his way out the door to PE, one 5th grader said, "We should do history like that more often. It was cool to listen to it on the website like that!"

Today being the first of February was the start of two challenges for my class.  There has been a renewed vigor in the amount of reading my students are doing now that they have a goal in mind... Mr. E in a gorilla suit!  We did extra read-aloud today to kick off the 20,000 page school-wide challenge.

Mr. D's class (well, Mr. D anyway) has been trash talking our class saying that they're going to beat us in the Fruit and Vegetable Challenge.  I have my doubts; my students can be very determined, especially when people trash talk them.  At lunch my class had the best of intentions, each student taking more produce than usual, but many found that there wasn't enough room in their stomachs for everything!  When they went through the lunch line, I had written down how many servings each student took. Then, before they dumped their tray, I recorded any changes in the number (like if they hadn't finished a serving).  Two kids didn't eat all their servings.  A few of them forced themselves to eat more so they could still count the servings.  As of today, the 5th graders are beating the 3rd graders, and the 4th graders are beating the 6th graders.  But it's only the first day! Plenty of time to catch up.

I need to remember my February challenge too... InCoWriMo! Who should I write to first...?