Language: Comma placement worksheet (except for Mr. Lowery's class; we ran out of time and will have that worksheet tomorrow!)
Vocab quiz on Thursday (only over this week's words)
Pirates. Camel spiders. Blackmarkets. Government spies. Nuclear weapons. Cubs players staring down field cams. Crayons. Ration cards and cakes.
I'm not sure how to even go about explaining today, so I guess I'd better just start at the beginning:
It's National Talk Like a Pirate Day! And really, what's more fun than talking like a pirate?! Dressing like a pirate! The kids today got a really good taste of what life is like in Mrs. Yeagle's 6th grade as they got to see me dressed in my pirate garb (Captain Yeagle, at your service!) and hear part of the ELA lesson in pirate speak. Only part of the lesson, though, because we DID have important things to take care of!
We read another of my favorite children's books, The Day the Crayons Quit, and used it to practice our characterization work. After reading a portion of the story, we analyzed the crayons from the book to complete a character study. We discovered that pink crayon was sassy, red crayon was angry, and green crayon is just plain nice. And that's just the tip of the ice berg!
We wrapped up a vocab lesson with a great video of a new Cubs player gawking at the camera (gawk was one of our new vocab words), and reviewed some direct address and comma placement grammar skills.
Then things got REALLY crazy. What started off as a normal social studies lesson spiraled into a multitude of amazing questions, and that's where the camel spiders, blackmarkets, nuclear weapons, and government spies came into play. We even got to talk about ration cards from WWII and the role of government in civilizations. We didn't get anywhere near finishing the lesson I had planned, and we gave up a little bit of study hall time, but I think we all had a good time learning about things that aren't normally on the docket. While I sometimes feel a little frustrated that my carefully paced and pictured social studies lesson gets stalled (how will we EVER make it to Ancient Greece, guys?!), I'm at least really happy to know that these kids have some great questions running through their minds.