May 8th

I am going to be out of town tomorrow and Thursday, so I spent part of my time before and after class getting everything ready for Heidi, the teacher subbing for me. I am having my Kinder’s work on making a collage out of the portraits that they took last week, based on the work of Dan Eldon. We look at his book pretty often this year, having it serve as an example of both our art and someone that tried to help others using his art. I printed up color versions of their photographs and then also made a bunch of black and white copies. I am excited to see the results… My 5th and 6th graders are going to be working on a writing project. I am having them envision that they discovered a new planet, they get to be in charge and have to write their own ‘Bill of Rights’ or set their own rules. Silliness always ensues with this assignment – my 3rd graders worked on this today, and among one set of rules for a student was ‘only people wearing Converse can live here’ which allowed him, another student and me to inhabit his world – but it’s a good way to get students to think about needs of a community and the needs of others, it builds into our community project that we did earlier this year when they designed a city.