1st and 2nd Grade - As the students arrived this morning, they finished up on their "faces of emotion." We then traveled to Crystal Pond Wood. Dudley the Detective, Sybil the Scientist and Max the Magician came up with the idea of starting a Puzzler's Club. Their invitation was an encoded message that the students had to decode. After decoding two more messages, students were to develop their own cipher and encode their own message.
3rd Grade - The word of the day was Nefarious. Nefarious means evil, infamous. The pilgrim of the day was Steven Spielberg. As a young student, Mr. Spielberg spent most of his time daydreaming in class. Unfortunately, this did not help him get into film making school. He was able to get into college. While there, he directed a short film. Universal Studios purchased the film and hired Mr. Spielberg and as the old saying goes, "the rest is history." The warm-up activity was called 20 Questions. Students were given an unusual object. They were to ask only questions that could be answered with either a yes or no to gain clues to the item's identity. Our travel to Crystal Pond Wood had us revisiting the pentominoe/visual thinking puzzles of last week. Due to the snow day last week (which we all enjoyed), these students jumped ahead of the Thursday group and were able to start studying the Gold Rush. After reading a book and watching a short video, students played the computer game "Yukon Trail" to learn more about the Gold Rush.
4th Grade - The word of the day was Petulant. Petulant means ill humor; irritable, cranky and sounds like Pet Lent. The pilgrim of the day was Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin led a busy life. He published Poor Richard's Almanac, founded the first public library, the first postal system, the first volunteer fire company, the first hospital, the first college in Philadelphia (the University of Pennsylvania) and turned the citizens' "Night Watch" into the first Philadelphia police department. He also invented the lightning rod, the Franklin stove and discovered electricity in lightning. Mr. Franklin is also the only person to have signed four of the most important documents of our country's history. These students also played 20 questions and were successful in determining the item in less than 20 questions. The affective lesson had us discovering the difference between self-esteem and self-image. Students then developed a biography for the alien/robots they built last week. We then critiqued the directions sent to us from the other schools.
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