Monday, January 19, 2010

We wrote in our journals this morning. Everyone was supposed to start their writing with when, who, and where just like in our writing. Ms. Stern wrote about visiting her niece. The sentences gave the reader(s) a lot of information about her topic and ALL of the sentences began with uppercase letters and ended with punctuation marks.

We had a spelling pre-test. Some people figured out that the words have a long i just like last week’s words had long a. We predicted that we will have other long vowels in the coming weeks.

Ms. Stern read Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse. As she read, we thought of words (like enthusiastic, creative, impatient, and remorseful) that described Lilly and marked the pages with post-its. After we finished the book, people gave evidence from the story that showed that the traits were true.

Today we talked about the earthquake in Haiti. A lot of people died, a lot of people got hurt, and a lot of people survived. We thought about ways that we might be able to help the people there so that they can be healthy and have better lives. We wrote an email to Mrs. Polansky and Dr. Mitchell to explain our ideas. We looked on Google Earth to see where Haiti is and what the country looks like. We got to see photos of some places in the country such as the presidential palace. Stephen recognized that picture from the news and learned that the building was damaged in the earthquake. Ms. Stern told us that an email was sent out to parents telling about a school bus that people in the schools are going to try to fill with needed supplies.

We continued our discussion about Martin Luther King Jr. and read two books about him. One was called Martin’s Big Words and the other was a biography called Let’s Read About…Martin Luther King, Jr. We looked at photos having to do with his life and then watched a short part of his “I Have a Dream” speech. Here is our thinking about the things that we learned about his message:
*It doesn’t matter the color of your skin. It matters what’s inside. –Adam
*We are free…it’s not like whites only signs are allowed anymore. –Victoria
*Even if there were places before, that we should try and help with words and not with fighting back. –Eesha
*He wanted to make the world a better place. –Stephen
*I never knew that he died by getting shot. His house had been bombed before that. –Sasha

Tomorrow we will be seeing a performance about Martin Luther King by Mrs. Yelin and Mrs. Luke’s classes.

In P.E., we did the obstacle course for the second and last time. There were lots of parts and activities. Some of them were: the climber, bouncing balls, the river, balance beam, hopscotch, and the “George Washington Bridge,” crawling, and a balance beam.

It was an important day filled with lots of grown-up discussions!