Today I came in and all the students were silently reading, which came as a shock, because I had never seen this class, or pretty much any class this silent. After I came in, and sufficiently distracted everyone from their reading, as a new but familiar stimulus in the room, they moved on to their next activity.
The teacher put an image up on the Smart Board (which I love, and wish I had in my room) and made the students think about it. They were instructed to brainstorm some ideas about a story that the picture would accompany. They were reminded of the stories they had just read, which were all Historical Fictions from the time of the American Revolution.
They all had some pretty cleaver ideas about Americans spying on British soldiers. They would start to make up stories or telling the class about the intentions of each of the characters in the picture. This was what the teacher was prompting, as after she came up with a sample story, she told the students to write the first two paragraphs of a new story that the picture could accompany, leaving it off with a cliffhanger. I think that this activity will really help activate some of the reading for the students, especially the ELLs.
Mina was called out by a teacher to do some baseline testing for a standardized test, I am not sure which one, but after this, I focused my attention on Ronoldo. He asked me about words, defining a word and searching for the word to describe it. I helped him out a little bit, but told him to do his best with the phonetically spelling. I have his story and will probably post it a little later because I really enjoyed it, as he considered the whole text, and the cliffhanger is very good, especially for a 5th grader.
When Mina came back, both her and Ronoldo went to the resource room. Suzahn was in the principle's office for saying the word "kill" I'm not sure in what context it was, but from what i caught, this has become a regular occurrence lately. I think that this is sad, but probably what may happen to a lot of students who are frustrated in their classes, or she may be using this as a way to get out of the classroom and the frustrations of some of the work, into a more intimate environment.
In the room, we started talking about the Titanic. It was weird because all 3 of the students had seen the movie, but I have never, and was not allowed to watch it when it came out when I was their age (weird!). They completed a KWL chart, and in the things they already knew section, would discuss aspects of the movie. Ronoldo started talking about the nude scene, and both I and the instructor said "wait wait wait" and stopped him. They each took turns reading pages from a little pamphlet on the boat. It is weird, I think that they each want to show off to each other how much they've improved, because they all seem to be clamoring to read. I think that it is interesting and really beneficial that they've learned about immigration in several forms this year, or travelling to America for a "better future," as they have read about Pilgrims and the immigrants on the Titanic.
