Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Day 2 of our 180 day adventure…..

Rules we discussed:
Hats, gum, and poisonous snakes. 

Free-Writes --
We discussed the rules of doing free writes.  We will be doing one or two free writes per week.  Some are serious in nature and they must write non-fiction type free-writes (i.e. they are not that creative).  Most will be creative free writes where they will be given a writing prompt and they may write as they see fit.
Requirements:
20 minutes or one full page whichever comes first.  If not a full page, then parent must sign and verify that it was an actual 20 minutes. 
Just write what you are thinking regarding the topic, do not worry about spelling and grammar.  We are exercising our creative writing process. 
It may be typed or handwritten, either one is fine with me. 
If typed you must use a font no larger than 14 and keep pictures or photos to a minimum. 

We then did a practice free-write during class.  The kids were able to observe that some students had completed almost two pages in 20 minutes while others students that I observed completed maybe a paragraph.  Both were acceptable amounts since some prompts will come easier to others.  The main goal is to do a “brain dump” about a particular subject.

Due Friday – a “serious” free write about your family.  They may share whatever they feel comfortable sharing about their family.  I will not be sharing these free writes with anyone these will only be read by myself.

As a class we reviewed the website
http://mrhubbardsclass.blogspot.com/

We also reviewed the website found on the District’s official page. 

Math:
We spent a significant amount of time discussing math workflow.  We corrected last night’s homework and answered questions regarding it.
We also re-reviewed the discussion about seeing placevalue in relationships of the power of ten.  It is similar to the style discussed in Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers book.  Young students focus on learning the concept of 1,2,3,4, 5,6,7,8,9, and 10.   Then they don’t learn all the numbers of 11-99….rather it is refered to as 10+1 {11}   or 2 10’s +6 {26};  Then the learning is focused on memorizing the newest place values that arise when you acquire 10 10’s or 10 100’s or 10 1,000’s, etc….
As an aside this also explains why the metric system makes so much sense to many of the countries that practice this type of mathematical nomenclature. 

We then walked through the book lesson (pages 6 and 7)
Tonight’s homework due Thursday:
Everyone does pages 7 and 8 (in the Hard Cover book HC) numbers  6 through 22
Students have a mandatory choice:
Page 8  (HC) problems 23-31 odds  OR
Work book (WB) Lesson 1-2 R (reteach) 

Students were given just about 15 minutes to begin working on their math homework.  Some students worked diligently and completed most of pages 7&8.  Some students dreamed of lunch time as their stomach’s adjust to our school schedule.  They were encourage save themselves from 15 minutes less of homework.

Community Building a.k.a. Circle Time
We discussed the rules of Circle Time and we talked about focusing and listening to each other. 
We were able to share what animal best describes ourselves. 
We were able to share what color best describes how we felt on our first day at school yesterday.  The class however became unfocused regarding listening to their peers so we had to shut the circle down about half way through this exercise.

We came back and did a listening exercise where we try to solve a 2 minute murderer mystery.  Yeah!! Tay-Tay for just about solving the mystery!!!

Homework:
Cover all three books by Friday (math, science and language arts)
Night math (see above)
Free-write due Friday (see above)

Reminder 2:05 all this week.  Regular schedule next week.

Back to School Night Presentation:
1-3 6:30-7:00
Everyone in the Multi Purpose Room 7:00-7:30
4 & 5 7:30-8:00

Kind regards,

Mr. Hubbard
(925) 271-2370
http://mrhubbardsclass.blogspot.com/
http://delicious.com/iamron
We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.
• Maya Angelou