flexibility

I read an article this morning about how teachers sometimes can provoke misbehaviors. One of the ways was through not having assigned seats. This made me think about our class. So, in morning meeting, we talked about our seating-what they liked, didn't like, needed, etc. We decided that some students can benefit from assigned seats and I will help them to pick where that seat is. They also shared that they would like more seating and more stability balls to sit on. So, we went and got 2 desks, some more chairs and found a round table to use. We moved some things around and this allowed them to spread out more. I also created a project on Donors Choose to get more balls for the room. (I'll send out more information about this project. What I love about it is that they have anonymous donors and they'll match every donation for the first week so we only end up paying out of pocket for half!) Then, we wrote sentences using 5 of our words that we needed to understand the meaning of and continued on in the writing process. The kiddos yelled at me because in Wonder, I stopped right when Jack realized what HE did to make Auggie mad... In Reader's Workshop, we continued our work with non-fiction text and read independently. We had gym, lunch and chilly recess and then quiet time. We had a shortened Math Workshop because we had Guidance but we worked with rounding numbers. Students are able to round numbers when asked directly but when asked to flexibly apply this understanding, they struggle. For example, if I say, "What is 452 rounded to the nearest 10?" They can tell me 450. However, if I were to say that I have a secret number that when rounded to the nearest 10 is 450 and ask them to tell me all the possibilities of my secret number, they can't. We'll keep working on this but rounding in these types of situations would be good practice at home. In Guidance, Mrs. Vidic discussed RESPECT and what it means. Then, we FINALLY set up our folders and began Wonder/I-time! They seem pretty excited about this "free" time. :)