Shot Clock

Hey there! Sorry for the late post, but after school, the WB internet was down, and Thursday night is the night I teach karate. So now that Purdue has beaten Nebraska, here I am doing today's post.

Today we got back into the swing of guided reading now that ISTEP is in our rear-view mirror. Well, the first part, anyway. We read up on history, with a focus on Patrick Henry (the "Liberty or Death!" guy), and we finished reading the Genius Files: Never Say Genius. It should have been called Genius Files: No Real Ending. We all felt ripped off, because it didn't really end. It just stopped with a cliffhanger. The most unfortunate thing: This book just came out on January 24th of this year. The next one is nowhere in sight. The kids seemed disappointed that they won't get to have that one read to them where they can "hear the voices." (Yeah, I do give the different characters their own voices...) Lesson learned! Dan Gutman (the author) writes in a very conversational way that is easy to read out loud. I've read Qwerty Stevens earlier this year, and maybe something else--the years blur together--and I've come to appreciate his style immensely, but this was somewhat disappointing.

That having been said, however, I am going to start reading another book by Gutman tomorrow--one that I know has an ending. I told the kids today after I finished that book that I would let them vote between two basketball books, keeping with the season. I read the beginning of an NCAA Final Four mystery by John Feinstein, but I decided while reading that first chapter that this wasn't going to flow from my mouth the way others do. So I'm going with what's comfortable. It's called The Million Dollar Shot, and it's a good one!

In Math, today we played a game of Multiplication Wrestling. It's pretty much a glorified game of War, but it was pretty fun. I told them that if we have a good start to the day tomorrow, we will play a game I learned from Dr. David Goldberg when I was in a math class at Purdue called Poison. It's remarkably easy to play, but still challenging and fun. Hopefully we will get to play it tomorrow and they will come home and challenge you to a game. Our actual lesson today was on simplifying equations, and since we did this earlier in the school year, they are having a pretty easy go of things thus far. A much-needed respite from the chapter over ratios and rates!

Remember: Tomorrow is Jersey Day! For real! And Hat Day too. Bring a dollar for the people of Henryville, Indiana, which received heavy damage last week as a result of the tornado. Remember that if you want to make a bigger donation and want to pay by check, you can make it out to Woodbrook, and put in the memo line "tornado relief".

Have a great Friday and an even better weekend!