Tea & Stones

This week has just flown by and Room 503 has been one busy place!

In drama we have continued to hone our ensemble skills, fusing observation with sound and movement. On Tuesday, the students were given the task of "researching" a machine or a factory in order to observe the many parts that make it function. They were asked to notice each part: its shape, size, movement, sound (if it had one), and how it fit/worked with the other parts, keeping in mind that if a part were broken or missing, that the machine/factory would not be able to function.

This assignment was the basis for creating "human machines" - each person becoming a specific part of a working whole. Through sound and movement, the students have worked together to create machines that demonstrate how each ensemble member is integral to the success of the whole.

We celebrated the end of our first Language Arts book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, with a tea. The tea was a fun way to wind up the book and enjoy some refreshments (and get out of our typical discussion mode), but more importantly, it was our first forage into learning how to create well-formulated discussion questions. The students are learning what makes for a good discussion question, and how and why a discussion question is different from a creative prompt, a factual inquiry, or a reflective question. Hard stuff.

Many of the students are already beginning to grasp what a good discussion question is, and we are only at the start of a very long process. I was pleased to find many of the students engaged in discussion, digging deeper, and asking even more thoughtful questions as the tea progressed.

In Social Studies we delved into group work in order to explore the Stone Age, fusing history and creativity with problem-solving and team-building skills. The students have spent the past two days brainstorming ideas and coming up with a "game plan" for their group.

Tomorrow we will wind up the week with our "Class List" spelling quiz. Each morning when we take attendance, all of the students and myself, participate in calling off each student's name out loud in order to hold all of us accountable for one another. Besides knowing each others name, my belief is that it is important to spell each others names correctly (it's a horrible feeling when someone you know fairly well misspells your name, isn't it?). Hence, a quiz.

There was obviously a lot more going on this week, but these were the "biggies" in the above academic areas.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend -

Cheers,
Ms. Nicky Pitman