Happy Tuesday! We spent a good part of the morning learning about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This included reading the book Martin's Big Words, watching a brief video about his life, and listening to part of his "I Have a Dream" speech, The Scholastic News article "A Hero in the Family" helped us focus on the following character traits: peaceful, brave, working with others, and not giving up.
During Junior Great Books, the students thought about what they would have done if they had been Rosalinda when she saw the Night Man at the market. They wrote about this and provided explanations for their choices. We will begin a new reading selection during our next Junior Great Book session.
There were two specials classes today: ASL and P.E. After P.E., we looked at the Unit 17 words during spelling. They are words like friend, that are often misspelled by beginning writers. We also read and discussed the books The Boy Who Wouldn't Share and In My Heart: A Book of Feelings. One of the interesting questions that came up about the first book was why the girl in the story shared with the boy when he had not shared with her. It was not easy for many of my little friends to understand how such a thing could take place. However, in the end, we were able to make connections to some of Dr. King's "big words" about how to treat others. Ask your child about this!
Finally, at the end of the day, we focused on Spain during social studies. We read The Story of Ferdinand and watched a video clip about cork oak trees. The students created true-or-false mini-books about cork. Moving forward, we'll focus on Ferdinand's character traits and try to make connections with others who choose, or who chose, peace over fighting.