We want to tell you about what we have been up to so far.
We have been doing something called ECLIPSE (Rowan). It is a Language Arts program (Katie). ECLIPSE stands for Engaged Choice Literacy Independence Purpose Stamina Enthusiasm (Kaitlyn). We have been practicing "Read to Self" everyday and building our stamina and muscle memory (Sohail). It is very very quiet when we are all doing "Read to Self" (Sarah). It's also very peaceful (Noah). We have Book Boxes that have good fit books in them and we practice picking a good seat, and reading independently (Katie). We talked about the three ways you can read a book (Read the Pictures, Read the Words, Retell the Story) (Evan and Jay). We also usually have volunteers demonstrate how to do it correctly and how not to do it (Evan).
I hope the students are enjoying ECLIPSE and learning from it so far. We will be training and adding on to the choices over the next little while (Tiiu).
We've been practicing our times tables by doing something called Precision Math each day (Jay). Precision Math is where you have a minute to answer as many math facts as you can and you are trying to reach your goal (Grady). We set our goals by writing the numbers 0-9 over and over again for a minute. We used the number of digits that we wrote down in one minute to set our goal (Zane). When we pass our goal we get to move on to the next fact family (Yarabi). Each digit counts as a point (Quinn). The idea is that students are working according to their own skills and pace. At the end of each minute, we graph our results (Katie). The Precision Math program has us practicing our facts from the 2 times tables to the 12 times tables. After we finish all of the facts, we might restart with a higher goal or we might move on to the Division program (Dominic).
In math, we also filled out a multiplication table with all of the facts that we knew automatically with a green pencil (Sohail). We did all of the facts that we needed to calculate a bit in yellow (Rebecca P.). We used red if the answer takes us a long time to figure out (Aidan). Now the students will have a better idea of the facts that they need to work to memorize or make little tricks to help them learn them. We will be learning some of these tricks in class.
We've also been working on an art project based on the artist Chuck Close (Grace). We are using photos of our faces to recreate something that looks like a Chuck Close piece of art (Ben). Chuck Close did grid paintings because he had a special kind of dyslexia known as prosopagnosia which made it difficult for him to recognize faces (Leigha). His style of art is called photorealism (Sarah). Chuck Close got a blood clot near the top of his spine that paralyzed him but he persevered through it and still makes art (Ciarn). After his accident, when he started painting again, his painting were more colourful. He said he was happier after the accident (Dominic). He was happy to be alive and still be able to paint (Alicia).
We are very happy to be in Room 207 (Katie).
We want to know if you are visiting us here. Please comment so that we know you are around. Thanks!
