Substitute: Day 2

Today, with a full day of learning ahead of us, I began the day by taking roll and lunch. I began by reading "The Story about Ping" by Marjorie Flack. The children were quite attentive during the reading time, and seemed very engaged with the story. I had them pay close attention to the illustrations as I walked around the room.

When story time was over, I gave out unlined paper and asked them to get out their crayons. I asked them to draw a duck or a boat (or anything) in or on the water, use crayons, and show motion with their drawing. The resulting pieces were quite impressive, and the enthusiasm of the children about their work was surprising.

After the story and the art, we talked about the country of China. We located Alabama on the globe, and then China. We talked about the way people (and ducks) lived on houseboats in Ping's story, and how 1/3 of the population of China lives on houseboats. We used the word "population" when discussing China's overcrowding problem, and because it's in the "tion" word family, we decided to list many "tion" words on the board.

The discussion of China led the children to raise the issue of the deadly Tsunami and the current death estimates. I wrote the word "tsunami" on the board as another vocabulary word, and we discussed the disaster. The children were surprisingly knowledgable about the events causing the phenomenon and the discussion was quite lively. At 9:45, I left to go tutor and returned at 11am. The children and I explored more areas of Pings story, using mathematics to calculate the number of ducks who lived on Ping's houseboat.

At 11:40 we went to lunch, and I delivered the children to Ms. Miller's PE class at 12:15. From then until 1pm, I made copies of the reading and math tests to be administered that afternoon. When the children came back at 1pm, we took all three tests, finishing just in time for recess at 2pm. We returned to the room at 2:25pm and had time for read-alouds until 2:45. We then packed up and left the room at 2:50pm.