Wk 7 - Day 29

today was spent with mrs. l and her 26 students. normally she had a 3 hour block of language arts in the afternoon, but due to two students who aren’t able to be there in the afternoon...the principal had mrs. l and another teacher change their schedule so that the language art block is now in the morning. at first the principal wanted the entire 5^th grade staff to change their schedules, but the teachers complained that ~200 students shouldn’t have to change their schedules for just two students. so, now those two students are able to learn language arts, but are now missing math, science, and social studies. the principal stated that the students can learn those missing subjects at a later time by being able to read better. mrs. l stated that learning more isn’t necessarily better...comprehension isn’t guaranteed.

the math lesson was a review of money and emphasizing adding and subtracting with decimals. mrs. l uses the Smartboard with everything. she stated that the time to put in creating a lesson on Smartboard takes hours and that’s if you know what you’re doing. the good thing is that those lessons can be used over and over. in mrs. s’s class, the Smartboard has really only been using as a glorified projector. i’ve tried to do a few things in creating a lesson on the Smartboard, but I’m floundering around with it.

in social studies, the students presented their power point presentations on their states. mrs. l had a two minute time limit for each student, but that is still two class periods or more due to the size of the class. mrs. l had 4 students filling out a peer review form and instructed the other students that with their comments they have to have one positive comment for every one negative comment. it was interesting to watch how they put their presentations together. many of them had information in the power point presentation that had nothing to do with their states. all in all they did really well.