Pajama day . . . Our friends in Diane and Jeri’s room achieved a flawless pizza sale and delivery for the first time a week ago, and they decided to celebrate by watching a non-educational film instead of regular class and doing it in their pajamas. I was immediately asked by one of our group if we, too, could have a pajama day at the same time and — of course — agreed. In truth, it might be nice if we came to school in pajamas (and with a beloved stuffy in hand) every day.  We know that some students are happy to don soft clothing and fuzzy slippers while others are not, so we always define it as “pajama and/or stuffy day” to give some room for a more conservative level of participation. When we gathered in the late morning for our chapter book, we invited students to introduce their “guests” and tell us a bit of their history. Some of the stuffies have been with their child since infancy!

              

Civil War . . . Students are working alone or in pairs to write a newspaper article on one of the major battles. We’ve discussed the structure of a newspaper article (putting the “5 Ws” into the first paragraph, ordering the details in diminished levels of importance) and the need for a strong headline. They’ve given their newspapers original names and decided whether they are going to be reporting from the perspective of the Confederacy or the Union. (In the course of getting this project started, we discovered how little exposure most of our students have to news reports in print. Maybe we’ll do broadcast videos the next time a similar project is part of our work!)

We’ll be finishing that up this week and will then start to go deeply into the battle of Gettysburg in preparation for our trip on May 11. We’re going to build a model of the battlefield on one of our tables, as the terrain was such an important part of this event.

Changes and Choices . . . We did a vocabulary game that Diane created this week, as I previously described in an email to parents. It broke the ice a bit and should make our upcoming discussion of gender and identity a bit easier. We hope you are finding the shared reading helpful at home.

Next week I hope to have pictures and information to share about all the things our math groups have been doing.