Well, I have a cold so I'm feeling quite tired as I write this. I was pleased with how the day unfolded. I thought the class made a strong effort to cooperate and act responsibly today. As a result, I thought the lessons were very productive. We began with a five-minute handwriting (printing) warm up. In it, I added a few more letters. Tomorrow, or perhaps Thursday, we'll have our first practical test. I'll have to watch each student who thinks he or she is ready, one at a time. Next we began out first REAL writing lesson. We used monochromatic (black & white) images from a Google search of "photojournalism" to find what will be inspiration for descriptive paragraphs. I explained that the trick is to FORMAT the picture LAYOUT as TIGHT (I've attached a sample of the window for that operation). Again, we had some technical difficulties with computer batteries, but most students were able to get done. Some chose to copy their work to flash drives (memory sticks/thumb sticks) to ensure they were covered in case anyone tampered with their work in the shared student folder. I suggested that a $5-$10 flash drive would be a useful purchase for this year since I plan to do lots of work in Microsoft Office, especially in Word and PowerPoint, because it can be thought of as relatively inexpensive insurance to protect what can be hours worth of work. Unfortunately, some lost their work so I've posted a sample page of what I hoped the class would have done by the start of tomorrow's class. We'll use these sheets to write paragraphs tomorrow.
After recess we worked to master "long" multiplication. The students worked hard to get through some very ugly looking problems.
After lunch we did a ten-minute free write on the topic "empathy," and then continued with our film Flowers for Algernon. There were some good points made during the discussions. For example we noted examples of how the protagonist, Charlie Gordon, is isolated in a variety of ways: physically, mentally and emotionally.
We ended the day with a game of three-corner soccer.
Please check yesterday's post for some amendments to my comments about the art lesson. I've highlighted the changes in bold. Thanks Joanna for making my vocabulary use more precise. Students have a still life drawing to do by next Tuesday
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