Fifth day in the Classroom

Today I got to Mrs. Almond's class at 1:30.  She was reading The Tale of Despereaux to her class and sent me on an errand to the faculty room with a bucket to fill with ice. When I got back she had me take the kids out to recess while she prepared a science lesson.  Her science lessons are always fun, she always puts on a white lab coat and wears her eye protection and becomes Professor Scatterbrain.  All the students get excited about science when they see her in her Pro. Scatterbrain getup.  When they came in from recess she had 7 trays set up and each tray had a cup of ice, a thermometer, and 4 of the students names on the tray.  She also had the question on the board..."What is the fastest way to melt ice without touching it with your hands?"  As the students came up with ideas on what they think the fastest way to melt ice would be she wrote down their ideas on the board.  Then she had the students get in their groups and start trying to figure out how to get their ice melted fastest.  They had to take the temp. of the ice every minute and log their findings.  It was interesting to see the different things the students came up with.  Some of them got a magnify glass and put it in the sun.  Others put a cup of hot water under it.  One group even found a lamp and put the light bulb right down by the ice.  I didn't get to see which team won, but it was fun to see how excited they got about the experiment and how creative they got.

I went over to Mrs. Greenfield's classroom at 2:30 and the students were learning about trees.  Mrs. Greenfield had the students tell me all kinds of information that they have learned about trees and why the leaves change colors in the fall and the names of many different kinds of trees.  They had a big poster of the huge trees in the Redwood Forest and the students told me that one of those trees can build 300 homes!  What?!  After that they did their 1 minute timed math fact.  All of the students who finished the sheet in 1 minute got to get up and dance with Mrs. Greenfield.  Then everyone got up and did a conga line around the room and then sat back down and got ready for their Scholastic reader, which they all seem to LOVE!  Mrs. Greenfield pays monthly for the Scholastic reader, so each child get a little workbook each week and she has a computer program that goes with it up on her projector board.  Today's Scholastic reader was about giving.  They learned about how good it feels to give especially this time of year.  Then they had a little Scholastic game that they got to play girls against boys and they played until it was time to go home.