January 26, 2021

We are finishing up our testing!  The kids are doing great.  We learned about bodies of water.  We stopped along the way as we were learning and doodled what we were learning about.  Ask me to show you my doodles about bodies of water.  We will be doing more doodling and I will be sending out an e-mail soon about it, but we do it to help remember, stay engaged, and to share with others.  My rules for doodling are that you use just one color unless told, it's not a picture just little drawings with boxes around them, and we sometimes add words to learn content vocabulary.  We have done this before with read alouds that didn't have pictures, and it seems to really keep the kids engaged.  
We took a couple breaks from doing worksheets, testing and writing.  We tried to guess the answers to some riddles.  The kids were very literal!  I had to suggest to them when to laugh and explain why it was supposed to be funny.  We also did an activity we have done before to practice strengthening our working memory.  We drew a big tic-tac-toe on the back of a used paper to organize what we were about to look at.  I showed them a screen with a tic-tac-toe and nine pictures, seen below.  We studied the screen for about ten seconds, then they had to draw what they remembered.  I suggested they think about how the pictures were related or grouped.  I suggested they repeat what was in each row aloud.  These are some strategies they can use when trying to remember things.  We will play this quick game periodically to continue to work on strengthening their memory.  I also let them know they often they might hear people say they don't have a good memory, but you can do things to make your memory better, and this game is just one of the ways we will work on strengthening our working memory.

I'm hoping to finish testing tomorrow!  Thursday I'd like to do a quick art activity with them to celebrate the end of the semester and doing a great job on their reading and math tests!
Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe