What a fun morning. I really enjoyed spending time with so many of my students' parents during back to school morning. It was a hectic hour full of information sharing and information gathering.
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Famous American Projects are coming along nicely. As you know, in my class students are doing the writing at school. Each classroom approaches this project a little differently.Some of the cool things your child is learning in room 55 are:
1. How to read biographies and determine the most important details. 2. How to compose on an ipad. 3. How to transition between paragraphs. 4. How to know when to start a new paragraph 5. How to revise (revisit) their writing over and over to improve before they edit 6. How to edit for complete sentences (and avoid wrecking two or more sentences into a run-on). 7. How to edit for basic punctuation (I help on the more subtle punctuation). 8. How to edit for spelling errors But most amazing of all... HOW TO COLLABORATE USING GOOGLE DOCS TO HELP EACH OTHER DEVELOP, POLISH, AND EDIT EACH OTHERS WORK. We aim to finish writing the biographies by Friday. During the first week we get back your child will be doing the illustrations and some early birds will be presenting. Presentations and illustrations are not actually due until Monday the 30th. For the presentation your child may build a diorama, display board, make a game about his/her famous American, write a newspaper article, create a Power Point, Keynote, Photo Story, or video. (they could videotape themselves dressed as the Famous American being interviewed by you) or simply use your imagination. In the past children have enjoyed dressing as their Famous American on the day they actually present their visual aid (which should include or be related to important events in the American's life. Presentations will be spread out from Monday, March 30 to Friday, April 3. I will put a calendar on the website with your child's date when we get back from Spring Break. Have a safe and happy holiday! Today, we worked on finding Important information in the wealth of information available to us about our Famous American. Your child may still need to read and reread their autobiography. The best books are the ones at a very low level, because they are easiest to understand and to identify the most important information. Many students forgot to have their parents initial the first three steps in the planner. Be sure to ask you child for their purple folder so that you may initial these three steps. We will begin listing all the important information we want to include in our biographies, tomorrow.
We also worked on our new vowel sound. The sound that is made by ue in blue, by oo in moon, ew in blew, and ui in fruit. If you want to help your child with these sounds for both reading and spelling, you can have them find other words with those sounds, or even pull out scrabble letters and let them form different words that have these sounds. Today, your child learned to use a new website to practice their math facts. It is called Xtra Math and they can practice at home beginning tomorrow. I will send home their 4 digit pin with a flyer explaining the program. This weeks reading concept is "How can changes in weather affect us?" The class realized immediately that what we wear changes according to the weather, but also what we do, what we grow and weather also has an effect on our property. As our weather changes dramatically this week, your family is given a wonderful opportunity to ask questions and discuss how those changes affect us. Today, your child is bringing home a purple notebook in his/her book bag. This notebook will be traveling back and forth to school daily in the book bag along with the biographies. While the children will be writing their reports in class, they may begin reading and researching to gather information and begin jotting notes on the appropriate pagers. They worked with me as a I modeled how to simply list important information rather than copying sentences word for word from their biographies. For example: Alexander Graham Bell was born in Scotland in 1847, becomes a note-Scotland 1847. They have separate pages for different aspects of their biographies such as Birth, Early Childhood, School, Adulthood etc. These pages by no means need to be filled up with information, but serve to separate the information. Today your child began learning about biographies. They worked in pairs to examine various biographies and find pertinent information such as: Janeen Hugs and kisses to Annie's parents for the wonderful classroom gifts. The Thomas family visited our wish list here on the website and opted to gift our class a dozen bright pink, extremely durable book boxes, as well as a set of magnetic pockets to help keep our classroom functioning at its best. We will be enjoying these gifts for years to come. Thank you to all our parents who give so willingly of their time, talents, and treasures. I always tell my students that I think about them when I am not with them. So it was this weekend. NPR was playing a bit on space and I was struck by this quote from Kennedy,
" We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." John F. Kennedy Choosing to do things because they are hard, because they serve to organize and measure the BEST of our energies and skills...This pretty much sums up (no pun intended) our new math curriculum. It has been nothing if not challenging and the students are being asked to struggle to comprehend addition and subtraction in a way that is very different than their parents or even their teachers were asked to do at this level. But, because they have struggled, I can see that they are laying down a foundation of being able to manipulate numbers in their heads that will serve them well, now and in the future. Yes you can certainly live a long and happy life adding and subtracting without "using ten grids to help you add", but the way the class has moved on to mentally manipulating numbers as a result has been very exciting. This last week students learned to mentally add 9/10/ and 11 to a number without "counting up", using "bump and point", "adding on their fingers" or whatever slower strategy they previously used. The simply went from 7+10=17 (believe it or not...a surprisingly difficult concept for many) therefore 7+9 must be one less than 17 and 7+11 must be one more than 17. It was amazing to watch the joy on their faces as they realized that they had the ability to do this in mere seconds. I know it may seem obvious to us, but arriving at this fact was hard for them. it required them to struggle, leave behind old trusted ways of doing things, but they worked their way through and were able to measure their own energies and skills that went into this learning process. They were able to perceive their own power. To me that is the best part of the lesson...that only by struggling can they organize and measure the best of their energies and skills and therefore know their own power. That is the true lesson. Only by struggling can we know the measure of our own power. Well, the school year is flying by. Whew, seems like the new math curriculum has us all (teachers and students) working twice as hard as ever. Good news...it seems to be calming down a bit and allowing us time to catch our breath. We've had some exciting days around FTE. Last nights major thunderstorm must have transferred its electricity to the students. They came in buzzing and vibrating all over the place. It was clear to me that many had a night of interrupted sleep. Even I woke up and I can sleep through most anything. So, we just put the math away until later and we wrote about the magnificent storm ( it was clear that there was no way that they were up to doing math anyway). If I've learned anything about good writing, it is that good writers write about things they know about. The illustrations were precious and the onomatopoeias ran wild. Crash, boom, crack! Apparently more than one child jumped right up out of their bed (in the splits no less)!Many others climbed into bed with mom and dadMore than one of their stories started with..."It was a dark and stormy night".One dark and stormy night I could not sleep. It was so, so, so ,so ,so, so so, so loud and bright. I was so, so, so, scared. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My mom came and got me, Ryan, and Carter. My mom got squished so she moved to Ryan's room.
According to their essays, there were many families that huddled together to ride out the storm. Looks like tonight may be a repeat of last night's performance. Drive carefully, stay safe, and sleep tight! Do you mind if I brag just a bit? My students are SO amazing. I projected a two part poem on the on the board and read it through a couple of times. The first time they listened like a reader (to find out what the poem was about). The second time was as a writer (noticing the use of repetition, word choice, and even the subtleties in the illustrations). This close examination helps support them as they notice and come to emulate what good writers and illustrators do. Here are the poems. You might enjoy seeing what you notice about them before you go on to see what the class saw. Their noticings were amazing! The first poem was all about perfection-the second about old and broken things, such as shiny shoes/scuffed shoes and brand new crayons/broken ones, etc. They noticed the word smock was unfamiliar to most. They also noticed that the hamster that was mentioned in the first poem was absent from the second and there was some lively conversation about why that might be. Maybe he was just forgotten, had escaped, been given away or of course the most obvious possibility. They noticed the different end punctuations in the final lines and offered their ideas to explain the differences. But, the noticing that had passed right over me was one child's who pointed out the background colors were different. First day was bright blue and solid and 179th day was a mottled faded almost grey-blue.
It's amazing what a second grader can teach the teacher! Back to School NightThe highlight of the second week was (for me) Back To School Night with the parents. I truly enjoy the time that we had together. I get to share my thoughts and priorities with the parents and get great feedback from them. Communication is so important between parents and teachers, but there seems to be too few opportunities for this exchange to take place. I love knowing what my students do once they leave my room as I am sure many of my parents wonder what exactly we do here all day long. Back To School opens up what amounts to a year long discussion and collaboration between school and home. I expect there will be ongoing parent/teacher conversations in the next few weeks and really look forward to Parent/Teacher conferences in October.
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September 2015
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