Mrs. Lyjak's Learning Company

Today in Target we had a day with no gaps or overlaps.  We finally found the earth ball so we could use the ball toss greeting.  In the morning we transformed three lines into an elaborate and original picture.  To do this we used evaluative thinking to make sure our pictures were original and had lots of details.  We also used divergent thinking because we started out with three lines and there were many possibilities.  Next, Mrs. Lyjak gave us someone else's transformation and we had to use all three kinds of thinking to create a title: divergent because there were lots of possibilities; convergent because the details were our clues; and evaluative because our title needed to meet the criteria which was it had to go with the story the picture was telling.  We used convergent thinking when we played Word Winks because the pictures gave us clues so we could figure out the phrase.  Most of us learned that "the light at the end of the tunnel" means that you can see an end to a hardship especially if you do not capitulate!  When we tessellated regular polygons, we used divergent thinking because we started out with regular polygons and could branch out to almost infinite possibilities.  We learned that trapezoids and rectangles are not regular polygons.  We also learned that cutting out our regular polygons accurately is a challenging part of making our tessellation.  We had a "brain-hurting" day in Target.

Today at Target all of the kids had a camaraderie.  With a canopy above our heads, we were updating our goal status.  We used evaluative thinking because we had to decide how well we were doing on our goals.  We used divergent thinking at the start of our game of Pica, Ferme, Nada because there were lots of right answers.  But towards the end of our Pica, Ferme, Nada game, we used convergent thinking because the clues were the P, F, and N's that Mrs. Lyjak gave us for our previous guesses.  We also used evaluative thinking at the end when we figured out what four of the digits had to be.  Finally, we used divergent thinking when we created our tessellations because all of us had different tessellations.  As you could see, we got all of our objectives completed today. 

We went Above and Beyond in our great day of Target.  We started off our day using convergent thinking to create shapes from the smaller tangram shapes.  The  clues were the tangram shapes that we used to create the picture on the front board.  We used all of the types of thinking for our game called Pica, Ferme, Nada.  At the beginning of the game we used divergent thinking because there were no right or wrong guesses and there could be many different numbers that we could guess.  Then we used convergent thinking because we used the clues that Mrs. Lyjak gave us based on our guesses.  Towards the end of the game we had to use evaluative thinking because from the clues that Mrs. Lyjak gave us we could figure out the criteria of which numbers were in the answer and which were not.  During Vocabulary Jeopardy and the Vocabulary quiz, we used convergent thinking to find the right answer from the context clues.  Convergent thinking was also used when we solved our Hands On Equations word problems because we had to use the clues in the word problems to find the correct answer.  We learned that one Korean queen was very wise but the Japanese captured and killed her.  Also we learned all about the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from an Above and Beyond project.  In fact there were many informative Above and Beyond projects presented today.  Next week we will start a new nine weeks so be prepared!

We had a marvelous day in Target today.  We started off our day using divergent thinking when we created our own wallpaper design because there are many different ways to do it.  We used convergent thinking when we tried to figure out the mystery words from the definitions and that it had the word "wall" in it.  Playing Pica, Ferme, Nada was another way we used convergent thinking.  We got our clues by taking guesses and then Mrs. Lyjak used evaluative thinking to write P, F, or N so we got more information about our number.  We learned that bevy is a group of animals and bland means having no taste or flavor.  We need to remember all of our definitions for our vocabulary quiz next week.  As you can see, we did not have a bland day in Target.

Today we did not have a benighted day in Target.  We used convergent thinking at the beginning of the day when we used the clues of the analogies to solve the crossword puzzles and evaluative thinking when we decided which resource to use to find the answer.  We also used convergent thinking when we solved our Story with Holes by using questions to find out clues to the hole in the story.  When we created sentences for our vocabulary words we used divergent thinking since we could have lots of different sentences and also evaluative thinking because we needed to evaluate whether our sentence showed that we knew what the word meant.  After we presented our Above and Beyond projects we used evaluative thinking to see if we met the criteria on the rubric.  We used all three different kinds of thinking today. 

When we first started our marvelous day of Target, we used divergent thinking to think creatively about several tasks.  Divergent thinking is when there is more than one way to accomplish the goal.  We used divergent and evaluative thinking when we created a list of foods that you can eat cold.  The other criteria for this task was to find a food that started with each letter of the alphabet.  Everybody found foods for every letter except X and U.  We used divergent thinking to think of other uses for a soda straw.  Then Mrs. Lyjak asked us to use evaluative thinking to select our most original idea.  Next we used the letters of our name to come up with a sentence where the words started with each letter.  Once again we used divergent thinking.  And to complete our tasks we used divergent thinking to create a picture using three set lines on the paper.  We used our convergent thinking to try to solve our Story with Holes (still working on it) and to match definitions to tessellation vocabulary.  We improved our vocabulary by learning that balk means to stop and refuse to proceed and bandy means to go back and forth.  Two students presented Above and Beyond projects about Chinese New Year and Harry Potter.  Sadly, we have to pack up and leave until next Friday.