In the classroom
- Morning Lesson. This week we will begin our exploration of Ancient Mesopotamia. Much of the work we will be doing will be hands on activities that will help deepen our understanding of the life and culture of the ‘Land Between Two Rivers’. We will be hearing the Epic Of Gilgamesh throughout the course of the next week and a half.
- Artistic Work. This week is full of artistic work, from the painting of maps to dramatic representations of Gilgamesh to sculpture and modeling in clay.
- Language Arts. During our morning lessons we will be taking some time to work with the content of the Epic of Gilgamesh. It will lead us to some discussion and practice of what we will call “Creating Great Sentences,” similar to he ways that the Mesopotamians created some of the earliest great cities. By looking at subordinate clauses, the students will learn how to change the mood of a sentence and offer more information in the their writing. This practice will continue throughout next week as well. During reading class, we will continue with the Iron Ring, practicing ‘scene shrinking’ where the students will be asked to distill the most important details of scenes into ten words or less.
- Speech, Song, Movement. We will be working with some tongue twisters these next two weeks, as well as an anonymously published poem titled ‘Our Mother Tongue’. (See below for the poem in its entirety). Towards the end of the week we will be reciting translations from the Epic of Gilgamesh. We will be singing a song called a “Peace Prayer Mandala” and will be picking up our c-flutes again for some Canadian folk tunes.
- Math. Our math work will be focused on practice/review of factors and multiples, simplifying fractions, and adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators. I have attached pictures of some helpful anchor charts which showcase some of the language I use when walking the children through some of these processes. I hope that these are helpful to you and I will post them as new ones are presented to the class. In Geometry we will begin our explorations of the circle.
Reminders and Other News.
- More blog updates. Here is the link.
- Empty Toilet Paper Rolls. We need them! Send as many as you’ve got with your child to school.
- Student Organizers. As I mentioned to many of you during our conferences, the students will be taking student organizers each day and then bringing them back to school each morning. Please help remind them of this over the next few weeks until it is worked into their habit lives. Their independant work for the block will be written in them. There will also be two pockets, one for things for home (handouts we are done using in class, work to show you, etc) that are to stay at home, and one for things for school (homework to be passed in, signed permission slips, etc) that will go back to school.
Our Mother Tongue
When the English tongue we speak
Why is break not rhymed with beak?
Will you tell me why it’s true
We say sew but likewise few?
And the maker of a verse
Cannot rhyme his horse with worse,
Beard sounds not the same as heard,
Lord is different from word.
Cow is like bow and low like bow,
Shoe is never rhymed with foe.
Think of hose and close and lose
And of goose, but yet of choose,
Think of comb and tomb and bomb,
Doll and roll and home and some.
Then there’s bough and cough and dough,
Thought and laugh, broach and bow.
And since pay is rhymed with say,
Why not paid with said, I pray?
We have blood and food and good,
Mould is not pronounced like could.
Wherefore done, but gone and lone?
Is there any reason known?
And in short it seems to me
Sounds and letters just don’t agree!
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough”
Others may stumble, but not you,
At hiccough, thorough, laugh and through?
Well done: And now you wish, perhaps
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it’s said like bed not bead-
For goodness sake don’t call it deed.
Watch out for meat and great and threat
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.
A moth is not a moth in mother
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose –
Just look them up – and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And front and font and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart –
Come, come I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive
And yet I’d mastered it by five!