Yeast Experiment (take 2) and T-Ball in the drizzle

This morning students survived the test on contractions with the average score being 8.8 out of 10. This was followed by Silent Reading time in which I marked them and gave individual feedback to students. We then did our second take on the yeast experiment. This time it worked. We will do the next practical session on the coming Thursday as I am loaning our precious bottles to a fellow staff member to use during the first half of next week. Like me, he inherited casi nada.

After lunch we did a small comprehension activities where students located the keywords in a text about yeast. and learnt to locate the key sentence (idea) in a paragraph.  We also explored some boxes and had four riddle-offs (Guess the answer to a riddle.) I also carried out the South Australian Spelling Test to pinpoint exact spelling ages as the SWST test only measures to 12.0+, this one will measure to 15.5+.  It will also give me a second set of data  just in case any student just had a bad test first time around with the standardised test administered in their first week back in February.

In the afternoon I explained the rules of t-ball and we headed out onto the oval for a game. The equipment was a little bit of a challenge but we still had fun and the students were amazing with their sportsmanship. We came back in at 2:40 as it was raining quite heavily at this stage. We ended the day with a quiz and did the seating draw for next week. I still owe each team an innings.

The stand before the top fell off

Next week there will be The Grand Microcosmos Competition where students will have to do quite a bit of concerted reading to match information panels to beautiful and fascinating images of life under the electron microscope. They will have to read the written texts and the visual texts very closely looking for the clues which will allow a correct match up. Feel free to drop in before school if you would like to give your son/daughter a hand.  Each student will be given a sheet with the letters A-Z and will write what they think is the corresponding piece of text, all of which carry a number from 1 -26. All correct entries will go into a draw for a prize which  actually haven't thought about yet. We will be looking the differences between a run-of-the mill microscope and an electron microscope.