Happy Lunar New Year! Happy Chinese New Year! We celebrated the holiday in division 2 by learning some New Years greetings in Mandarin and Cantonese—as well, students made shockingly beautiful tigers eyes using oil pastels. They had my video tutorial for ideas, you can see the students’ own flowing artistry and unique creativity in every single piece. I adore their beautiful art display, and I actually did a happy dance when it went up!
We also had a fun writing lesson learning about how important it is to strategically order your ideas in a paragraph, often ending in your strongest point. We used the classic salesperson exercise of “Sell Me This Pen”. Each student had the invitation to come to the front of the room and give a 30-second spontaneous sales pitch featuring three reasons to buy his/her pen—and the most compelling reason was supposed to be presented last—as a grand finale! We heard some fun, thoughtful and even hilarious persuasive points.
TONIGHT’S HOMEWORK: In addition to the long division worksheet, I’ve asked students to pick a family member and give him/her a compelling sales pitch for a pen. They can exaggerate or make up details (like this pen is an original WWII artifact)— the challenge is for students to (1.) meaningfully sequence powerful reasons with the strongest point last, (2.) use transitional phrases, and (3.) use descriptive language to paint a picture in the mind of the potential “customer”.
Inquiry Ninja 