Miss Brooks Has Class: The 4th Day Before Christmas

Today, in an effort not to be outdone by yesterday, was "snow" full of activity that maybe a nap is in order for tomorrow!

After a game of "Tree Movers" in gym, we headed back to the classroom to see Madame Coolen, decked in her finest apron and wielding wooden spoons and measuring cups. The grade sixes were going to be making short bread cookie dough this morning as part of their French lesson!

Listening to instructions for making candy cane short bread cookies

This leant itself well to the problem for Math. It was a baking question that the students were told to VISUALIZE, VERBALIZE and VERIFY. The visualization really helps in understanding the problem...

Each batch of 48 cookies that Jolly McJingles makes takes 20 minutes in the oven. If the oven is on for 3 hours and 55 minutes (15 minutes for preheating), how many cookies did Jolly McJingles make?

I love how you can use different
strategies/thinking
to get to the answer!

The entire school is doing an open response for the poem "Snowman". So, that was the text we read aloud today since it fit with our plans for later in the afternoon (and a sample was due to the bosses tomorrow).

SNOWMAN

Author Unknown

My little snowman has a mouth,

So he is always smiling south.

My little snowman has a nose;

I couldn't seem to give him toes,

I couldn't seem to make his ears.

He shed a lot of frozen tears

Before I gave him any eyes---

But they are big ones for his size.

This lead to a discussion about line 2's "smiling south" and punctuation's importance when reading poetry. Do you interpret the meaning differently depending on how the poem is read? The kids noticed that there was no punctuation after "tears" in line 6 so, if it was read along with line 7 it meant something different to some of them. The question they were asked to respond to was "Why do you think the snowman is built the way that you are visualizing?"

We decided poetry is a little like Math because there is no right answer or way to go about it as long as you give REASONS for your THINKING!

Some responses included:

They put a smile, nose but he doesn't have toes or ears so he is feeling pretty sad cause he doesn't have those body parts but there was one last thing: his eyes. So he was waiting for his eyes to be put on and as soon as the person put on the eyes he stopped because it said that “He shed a lot of frozen tears Before I gave him any eyes---” That means the wet tears turned into frozen tears because he was no longer sad.--Christian

I think he was sad but he became happy because it says “He shed a lot of frozen tears Before I gave him any eyes--But they are big ones for his size.” And that means that he was sad before he could see the world that it good and full of joy and not badness.--Grace

Maybe the person found too big of rocks (eyes) so they looked odd on him.The frozen tears could be that the snowman is melting and water was dripping from his face.Also his mouth he could have made the snowman facing south (direction).That is why I see him that way.--Xavier

The disastrous craft table

We spent the last period of the afternoon with a glue gun and an explosion of craft items so the students could make Christmas tree ornaments. These turned out pretty cute and definitely show the maker's personality. Tomorrow we will wrap them (if giving them away) and send them home.