Week Ten
This week on Tuesday I did my strategy lesson. The lesson was about the water cycle. I had a great book called Bob The Snow Man to read with the class as well as a poster diagram I made show the class. The students were enthusiastic about understanding the concept of the water cycle. We worked on spelling words like water, and river. We also had a magic-e word, lake. The students just received magic e pencils this week as it is a new concept to them. The students did a great job in participating in my lesson and we were able to connect it to many other things that they have been learning.
On Wednesday my writing buddy was absent so I worked with a new student. I helped him finish a rough draft of a story about Bob the builder. I helped him to revise his sloppy copy a bit. He was focused and wanted a bit of time to write, so I stood by and helped him sound out and spell tricky words. It was a pleasure to assist this student’s with his writing; he seemed to be enjoying the writing that he was doing.
Thursday was the second part of our four week unit with the third graders. My unit is about the senses. On Thursday we focused on hearing and discussed how different animals use the sense of hearing differently. I tried to use a bit of technology by showing a short video of a computer animated ear. The computer was not loud enough for the students to hear the video. They were excited about me bringing the computer, but there is not much that I can do with it without internet in the room. I was amazed at how many scientific concepts the students had already learned. We also talked about sounds we like, and wrote poems about sounds the students like. I did a brief mini lesson about onomatopoeia that tied into the poems the students were writing about sounds. I gave them the opportunity to choose which sense we will cover in our next meeting. The decision was unanimous for taste; we will combine taste and smell in one day next meeting.