General Delk's Army: Day 36- Special Day

Friday, September 30, 2011

Day 36- Special Day

You would have thought it was Christmas today. My soldiers were so excited that today was the last day of September! They didn't seem to care about the fact that it is Friday, or that there was to be a Teacher vs. Student volleyball game at the end of the day. No, they cared about getting to change our calendar during math from September to October.

I wish I had gotten a picture of their faces as I changed the calendar days. (they just had to watch me do it- I think they didn't trust me to do it later this afternoon) I did have to curb the Halloween talk. I told them that all talk of Halloween has to wait until after Fall Break at least.

During our Whole Group Reading time I had the Queen song Bohemian Rhapsody going through my head. Well, not the whole song, but the first line, "Is this the real life? Is it just fantasy?"
My class is working on finding the difference between fantasy and reality in texts. Today's story was The Bunnies and the Fox, as found in our Houghtin Mifflin text book. We read the story and pulled out the fantasy and reality elements.

The premise of the story is that 2 bunnies want to go outside to play in the snow, but their Mama doesn't want them to get taken by the Fox. It ends with the bunnies making a giant snow-bunny that scares the Fox away.
The kids liked predicting what was going to happen next, and one young mind...

(white shirt) predicted exactly what happened at the end of the story! I'm telling you, my students impress me a little more everyday!

I like the unit we are currently covering with the Core Curriculum. This unit is studying animals using non-fiction texts. It ties in with our previous science lessons on living things, our current lessons in social studies on habitats (continents, landforms), and now it will help our students when defining a text as fantasy (fiction) or reality (nonfiction)!

The kids talked me into teaching math on the carpet again today. I looked over their work from yesterday to make sure everyone was following along, and they were, so I guess I don't mind too much. We were working on using manipulatives to solve subtraction number stories.

Jamie has 5 pencils. She shares 3 of her pencils with her friends. How many pencils does she have left?

I held up 5 unifix cubes, passed 3 of them out, and we counted how many I still had left. Easy-cheesy. In fact, they really picked up on this skill quickly.

One of my students asked this wonderful question, "Mrs. Delk, does it matter what number we write down as long as we use the right numbers?"
He was remembering our lesson from yesterday when we studied Fact Families! In a Fact Family, it doesn't matter what order the addition numbers are in, the answer stays the same. (2+9 or 9+2) In subtraction, as long as the biggest number is written first, you can change out the other two numbers and it will stay in the same family.

I was so proud of my soldier for making that connection! I did, however, have to tell him that, in this case, yes it does matter what order the numbers are written since the number story was specific about what amount was removed. But what a great mind!

(the great mind belongs to the soldier with the black jacket!)

This afternoon faculty and students come together to enjoy a fun, moderately competitive, game of volleyball. (Three rounds, with teachers and students changing each round.) Mr. Burney was in charge of the music, and Yours Truly was the Master of Ceremonies! Basically, I called out the new names between the rounds and the scores at the end. I really wish I had brought my camera out! The teachers went all out with their outfits, crazy hair, and knee socks. (imagine a middle school girl from the 80's and there you have it!) Luckily, another teacher had her camera and was willing to share pictures!