Productive chaos?

Our day began with completing our M4T and then morning meeting. In meeting, we greeted our friends and shared one thing we've learned about ourselves and our learning so far this year. One thing we discussed was that distractions are possible no matter what the seating or anything looks like. The only thing we can control is our reaction to these distractions and how to keep the distractions from interfering with our learning. In Word Study, we found that our words are similar and that we can use what we know about one word to help us spell the related word (ex. televise, television) and then in Writer's Workshop, we continued our "One day, The End" stories. We discussed that adding more detail doesn't mean to add more sentences or events but to add more information about the sentences that are already written. Oh my goodness, they hated me for stopping where I did in The Tiger Rising! Beauchamp, the owner of the hotel and presumably the tiger, asked Rob if he would want a job taking care of a wild animal...could he really be talking about the tiger Rob found??! Then, in Reader's Workshop, we worked more with the vocabulary and figurative language in, The Cow's Horn from StoryWorks, read, visited the library and some met with me for Guided Reading. We had Music, lunch and outdoor recess today and during quiet time, while writing in our planners, we completed 2 of our homework questions because the format for the problems are the way they'll need to answer the problems on their math AIR test in a couple weeks. It is a very confusing format so a little practice will help them to feel more secure and be tested on the math content instead of a testing format. In Math Workshop today, we wrote decimals on an index card and then found a partner. We compared our decimals using <, > or =. Next, we ordered ourselves into a number line. They did awesome and I think understand these skills a little better! We ended our Math Workshop with some application of our decimal skills with some real world problems. In Social Studies today, we finished the branches of government reading and then worked on two Ohio Studies Weekly magazines. Finally, our day concluded with Wonder/I-time.