Why didn't you just say that?

This has been the motto lately among the kids. I am trying to get them to THINK instead of just telling them what to do. They get really frustrated because they want me to spoon feed everything. However, this will allow them to become better THINKERS! It can be painful at times (for all involved) but will be worth it in the end.

We began with our typical morning choice activities followed by word study during i-time. They didn't enjoy morning choice activities with a word study focus and I need to fit it in somewhere so we're going to try this. Today, they picked their lists of 12 words. After music, in meeting, Mrs. Hider had them share one great thing from their weekend and then they played category challenge for the states. Mohamed said the 50 states in alphabetical order before the ball got all the way around! Wow! (And I thought only I knew the "Fifty Nifty" song. :) ) In The Beaded Moccasins, Mary has a friend and she sure likes to talk! Mary is also going to go visit Mrs. Stewart... We read independently and in Reader's Workshop, we tried to secure our understanding of figurative language by making a flip book with figurative language terms, definitions and examples. This really helped! Some even wrote using figurative language in Writer's Workshop. It was too cold so we spent recess inside and after quiet time, we took a 5 min. multiplication fact timed test. They BEG to do these! I added a bit of challenge for those that were up for it by putting the multiplication facts in division form. They have learned that knowing these facts fast has helped with multi-digit multiplication, division and finding equivalent fractions so they are trying to improve. Then, in Math Workshop, we continued our work with decimals as money and this is when they really said, "Why didn't you just say that?!" We ended our day discussing the Declaration of Independence or as we are referring to it, a breakup letter. We watched a clip of the movie, "National Treasure," which explained a little about the document and then illustrated the words of the preamble.