What a great day at school.

Today was a great day at school. The children were working on different projects when I arrived this morning.  I worked with the group who were working with antonyms and with blends.  Part of them worked with words that were opposites-such as many/few and some worked on words that began with blends. The blend group worked with cards that had the beginning sound and the ending of the word- sk/unk or br/idge.  The children then had to write sentences with the words they had made. 

Making a sentence is a big deal for a first grader.  It is very difficult to make a sentence, spell words correctly, and to write the letters correctly.  And two I worked with zoned out as we worked.  I had to constantly restart them writing.  They just could not stay on task.

We had a wonderful bonus today.  We had an assembly.  The Pacific Boychoir sang for us.  This is an amazing group of young boys. They are a group of children from the 5 Bay area counties, who attend a school in Oakland dedicated to music.  They are a professional choir that has traveled the world: China, Russia, South Africa, Denmark, Ohio, Hawaii, Germany, Hungary, France. . .They visit schools in the area, they sing with major symphonies, they are Grammy winners.  I have never heard children sing so wonderfully.  I wish I had had my iPhone with me.  I really wanted to record the performance.  Pretty amazing assembly.

After the assembly we had recess and then back to the real world.  We had a math test to do that all first graders in Oakland would be doing.  It is multiple choice, they just bubble in the correct answer. Testing first graders is so hard.  They want help and we can't do more than read the question; they can't find the problem we are on;  they yell out the answer; they get upset because the answer they think is correct isn't one of the choices; they check out the answer their neighbor has; they can't find their answer and are one question behind.  It really is hard to keep all of them on track.  We made it through, mostly.  Some of the children were so upset they just quit.  So Ms. H gave the test individually. 

After the test I read the book The Very Cranky Bear by Nick Bland to the class. I can't find a good web site. He also is a well known photographer.  The sites are more about his photography than his book.

This was a special day.  The children really enjoyed the holiday show from the boy's choir.  They worked hard in class, and they loved the book I read.  The math test, not so much.