a little bit of this a little bit of that

Wow, it has been busy! This past week I have been subbing in the morning with 5th graders and then dashing over to my school for the afternoon. The fifth graders were "challenging." They have a science kit (FOSS science kits for anyone who might have heard of them) that takes a bit of prep and more teaching time than the kits advise. Last week they were learning about mountains and contour maps, elevation, and topography. All fun things, but I think the curriculum was a little difficult to follow so in a few places I re-arranged and re-ordered to give the students a better understanding of the work.
My classes have been working on adjectives and starting a project called "This Land is My Land." Adjectives...well they are pretty self-explanatory of describing words of emotions, size,shape, or speed, and colors. Of course, they are other things, too; but I didn't want to overload my level twos. The "This Land" project started with singing woody guthrie in class and identifying the adjectives and nouns that are used in the song. The project will be creating a poster project of each student's home country. My level threes are mostly Ukraine and Mexico, but we also have Egyptian, Peruvian, Philippines, and South Korea. They will be researching and writing a paragraph about the environment, education, and climate and then two other paragraphs of their own choice. The project reemphasizes what they are learning in their social studies and a little of what they are learning in their science class.
And then i will be doing a training from next Saturday (the 11th) through the following week. So I need clear expectations for the students and manageable lessons for the sub.

blessings on all who labour......