Feb. 16 (Thurs.)

Today was an exhausting day. It was a good day, but a looooong day. The kids worked on legends again, this time each pair had a chapter from the King Arthur legend. Their job was to read the legend, highlight the key words, and summarize their chapter. I put them in their groups and they got started pretty quickly, but I handed out the highlighters way too early. Some of the groups were highlighting words like they were doing a word search and didn’t read the story at all, until they realized they had to summarize it. The kids were really helpful with one another, and even the novice kids took turns highlighting words they noticed. I’m not sure how much they understood the chapter, but they were able to participate in the large group, which they all seemed to enjoy.

The writing portion of the lesson went fairly smooth, but I think it would have been better if they had a copy of the overhead. They couldn’t read the small print, and while they were able to keep up orally, a visual reference would have been a helpful to keep everybody on track.

Jaime didn’t come to school today, but we don’t know what his parents have decided. Behaviorally, Ruslan is the only one who is continuing to be a problem. His attitude has really changed for the worse. Anthony was out testing, Minah was too, but I think he will be fine without having Jaime around.