Friday, December 2, 2011

I am away today due to the illness of my daughter.

Yesterday we resumed a double period of investigating time.  Based on a diagnostic test before, a number of the students had difficulty doing this:

1:10 means ______ min after _________. 12:55 means _________ min to _________.


We looked at the clock as a circle divided into quarters equalling 15 minutes or 15 seconds.  This was also a review of some fractions we did earlier in the year.

  We played a game which reviewed some of the challenging questions.  Each student has to select a time and another students had to say how to write it using numerals.

To extend this activity, we began to talk about elapsed time.  This is something we will work on next and will require some skills in subtraction.  Sandro proposed a very challenging question to the class which generated a lot of discussion and fun.  The question combined what we had to been talking about all morning and I thought he did an excellent job of synthesizing and pulling the information together.

In the afternoon, after our regular Monday-Thursday routine of doing cursive, I began to read this book:

It is the story about a professor who has been diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer.  The book, while not the main lecture that is available on Youtube, contains a series of short stories he told his friend, Jeffrey Zaslow, while they were riding their bikes.  Initially some of the students thought it would be boring, but the story I am reading pulled them in.  This is a video clip of Randy Pausch giving a shortened version of his lecture on the Oprah Show.

For some of the students the idea of death and dying is bleak.  For them, developmentally, it probably is.  As they are learning from our discussions about loosing a loved one, death is a part of life and life is about living.  Randy's book, and even the book we read about the Mom who went through her Chemotherapy treatments, is about learning to cope and confront some of the challenging things in life with an optimistic spirit.  deal with the hard things l  but I think they are beginning to understand that life, living, and being hopeful  and living.

The "Thoughtful Art" exercise continued, and will continue on Friday.  I did a quick version of my art to remind the students what they are to do.  Every student has to check in with either Mrs. Machado or myself to ensure that they are following the spirit of the art along with completing 3 of the Artistic concepts we explored.  Bishop poked his hand in on the side and cute, Christmas inspired mini work of art.

HOMEWORK:  If the message is delivered to the school, the students will have a Reading Response to do in their Literacy folders on Energy and Sports drinks.  Have a good weekend.