Ummmm - Where is Everybody???

OK parents...Students...  Guess what... It's Winter... it is going to snow sometimes.. or rain... but guess what.. If School is OPEN, you should be here!  SEVEN students were out today!  Like I told the students just the other day.. 180 days... we have to show a years growth in 180 days and I have some kids who have already reached 20 days of not coming to school.  NO BUENO!!!!

• 1st Period - D.E.A.R waiting for late students to show up... went over the flow of the day and what we were going to do.  Spent the last half of the period going over the performance task for the end of Unit 2 in ReadyGen and looked at the scoring rubric as well.  I really took the time to break it down, line by line, and have the students discuss what they had to do and how they had to do it so they could do well.
• 2nd Period - While waiting for Mr. Nunez, I let the students finish watching the end of "The Indian in the Cupboard" movie from Friday.  He didn't come... and he didn't come, and eventually Mr. Hernandez called us to come downstairs for the Anti-Bullying Basketball game with the Harlem Magic Masters.  It was supposed to be from 9:30 until 10AM.  Well, we got down there at 9:45 and didn't get back to our room until 11:10.  That is how much fun we had.
• The kids had fun and believe it or not, Mr. McDougall got out there and played a little basketball with them PTA/Teacher Team against the Harlem Magic.  Heck, I even scored a couple.  This old guy has a few years left in him I guess!
• 4th Period - After the assembly, we returned to the classroom and talked about Bullying and also about gratitude.  To show our gratitude to the Harlem Magic Masters, the students wrote thank you letters focusing on telling them about themselves, what they like best, and that they pledged not to bully anyone.  After the letters were finished, we tied in our performance based assessment that we are starting tomorrow to reading and then watching the movie of The Indian in the Cupboard.  As a class, we compared the two media, then contrasted them, and then stated our opinion as to which we liked better and WHY using textual support.  Once we looked at the performance based assessment through an alternate lens, the students literally had that "ah ha" moment where they said.. Oh, this is going to be easy!  I love when they have those moments!
• 5th Period - we crossed the hall and the students did Math Waggle while I worked one on one with people in the back on their writing.  
• 6th Period - Lunch
• 7th Period - Intro to Chapter 4 "The Thirteen Colonies" in Social Studies.   I always start the unit by having the students look up the vocabulary words from the unit so they know what the words in bold are, and also to get practice in using the text to find information.  12 of the 13 words were in the glossary, one they had to get out of the text.  These are skills they will need for independent work so I think they are important to practice.

Homework:

• Math - Making Equivalent Fractions Practice #1
• Social Studies - Finish any words in bold vocabulary words
• Reading - 45 minutes of Silent Sustained Reading