Arm Spans and Tall Tales

Zumba officially started back up again for my students. They were so full of energy and excitement. Ms. Jill has been on leave for her pregnancy to rest, but this week she's came back to teach her fill-in Ms. Kristen what to do. We also made a trip down to the library since last Friday we cancelled our trip when we saw how windy it was. We challenged all the students to find 2 books that challenge them and one had to be a chapter book. Every student followed this direction beautifully. My class was pretty awesome today. All my students were on their best behavior all day and even my two little troublemakers didn't need any major reminders today. We started off our morning by beginning to read Dona Flor: A Tall Tale about a Giant Woman with a Great Big Heart. The story is quite lengthy and I couldn't get through more than half of it during my 20 minute reading groups, so we had to break it up into a two day lesson. I was suprised when I realized the students actually liked the story and wanted to read more.

One of my students who has been struggling in both reading and math...( the one who actually tells everyone he doesn't like school) had an awesome day today. I was so happy. He was right on for everything. During reading he was ready to read when the others in the group were talking still. He noticed when Manetta changed something during snack on our "what do I need? board" and he immediately got it out so he was ready to go. He also for the last two days has been glued to an A to Z mystery book. When I asked him if I got more would he read them, he almost jumped out of his seat. So I will definitely have to get some more to add to our classroom library. This is the first time I have seen him this excited about reading ever! I was kind of sad when I realized the whole set through Scholastic was still rather expensive.

In math today we reviewed measuring and discussed gathering data. We measured our arm spans in centimeters and inches and then we measured the length of our jumps. The students giggled in delight when they found out our Everyday Math tape measures did go up high enough to measure my arm span. I couldn't help but smile with them.

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