Our first block of the year is done. Norse Mythology and Grammar have filled my head and the children's books for the last four weeks, and I am ready for a change. This year, I tried something new. Rather than have the children put their work into one book, and merge the grammar and writing lessons in that way, I had them keep two Morning Lesson notebooks, one with compositions and dictations on the Norse myths we had been hearing, and one with grammar rules and explanations. I found this to be moderately successful, but it was a lot of work for the children. Nearly everyone had to take home his or her book to finish copying their work from their rough drafts, and it meant their spending about 40 to 60 minutes of each morning engaged in writing, rewriting, editing, copying, or illustrating. Add in 20 minutes for opening rhythmic and action activities and ten to fifteen minutes at the end for the story, and my time for review and presentation of new material were cut very short.

Part of this came from my trying out Else Gottgen's practice of "free rendering". In its pure form, free rendering gives the children an opportunity to bring forth out of themselves their own response to the previous day's material through artistic expression, be it sculpture, drawing, movement, or writing. I tried having the children write short compositions during this time, but found that while some of them could crank out a three-paragraph retelling of the story from the day before with little or no problem, others couldn't get beyond the first sentence. This is a cue to me that we need to work on our retelling skills, as well as organization of a paragraph or compostion. I'd like them to be putting the following into their books each week of a language arts or humanities block:
1. A dictation
2. a composition they have written on their own
3. a full-page illustration or diagram
4. a class composition copied from the board.

This average of four pages per week has held true -- we have nine pages of work in the Norse book and seven in the grammar book.

Things to remember for the next block:
-- take time to walk them through the instructions in more than one way -- don't just tell them what to do!
-- have an example of good work up for them to view -- I need to create my own lesson book to show one way of doing the work well. They are past the age of needing to do all their work in a guided, step-by-step way. They just need to know how high I've set the bar.
-- plan out the work for each week in greater detail.

So, we will start our local history and geography block on Monday. I'm calling it, "Where are we, and how did we get here?" We will start with our bodies, orienting ourselves to the movement of the sun, finding the four cardinal directions. We will branch out to our classroom, school, and community as far as each of our homes. Meanwhile, our history work will address the question, "what is history? How do we relate to our past? How did we come to be here, together, now?"

the last night of summer

I took the dog for a walk earlier. It was hot today. We only stayed a few hours at the fair; it was hot and bright and full of people. We ate slushies and roasted corn and foot-long corn dogs, and butterflies landed on us at the butterfly house.

As Amos and I made our way around the circle, I called out a hello to a neighbor and her daughter sitting on their stoop. The mother was painting her child's toenails, a first-day-of-school pedicure. They were giggling and loving one another. We saw a young gray squirrel bounding across the street with a walnut clamped firmly in his teeth. The squirrels know the heat won't last.

My lunch is packed. I have picked out my clothes for tomorrow. I have read and re-read my story for morning lesson. Now all there is to do is wait, and sleep, and go to school.

anticipation

My classroom is ready. My lesson plans are ready. Now, all there is to do is wait. On Monday night, I'll review my story -- the beginnings of the world from the Norse myths, practice a couple of poems and songs, and get some good sleep.

On Tuesday, I will welcome twelve hearty little souls to the fourth grade. Already, Welcome to Fourth Grade is spelled out in Runes on the chalkboard, right next to my chalk painting of Ymir and Adunla, and beneath it is a Celtic knot I took great pains to draw so that the weaving in and out of the strands shows.