Today's action

We are moving along at a great clip in both our poetry and symmetry units, finding ways to incorporate them into a variety of curriculum areas. We have explored 8 different types of poetry, most recently Haiku. The kids have really embraced the styles we are looking at, and are even writing poetry on their own time on a variety of subjects. Nice to see!

I found a great (Free) iPod App for editing video/film clips. It is called Splice, and I hope to use it in class. It will be the program we will use for doing the final edit of our "Monsieur LeBlanc" videos. Also, I used it to put together a show that gives more detail on the "Floor Symmetry" shown in the previous blog post. If you or your child has an iPod Touch or iPhone, I would suggest downloading it and playing around with it.

I put off book report presentations until tomorrow, due to some activities running long today. This should take up most of the morning tomorrow, and the afternoon will be dominated by science experiments as we get more in depth into our unit on light. Here are a few more notes on what is coming up, with more to follow tonight.

• Most students finished enough classwork to get their Math Review sheets today, and should be able to start working on them up to Lesson 4. I hope to test and finish this chapter by sometime next week.
• We will be creating a poetry booklet over the next few weeks that will showcase the styles we are working on.
• Building further on students' interest in musical styles and varieties, I have been playing more and more music during class time. This ranges from comedy to contemporary to classical, and seems to be a very constructive force in class.
• The Sweat-a-Thon assembly is this Friday. Thanks to parents who have donated prizes; if your organization or place of work is interested in donating any sort of prize, please send it along before then.