Hello Everyone! We are having a great week in Core 2! We have begun the process of creating artifacts to represent ourselves out of clay. I had some really great conversations this week with students about whether an object really represents something important about them, or if it is just something that they like. Watching kids think about what is truly important about themselves was awesome and inspiring! This is a conversation that would be interesting to extend at home. A lot of students struggled to get from the idea of “I am going to make a cat because I like cats,” to “I am going to choose a cat because cats are curious and I am a curious person.” It takes some guidance and exploration, but leads to really interesting insight about what students think of as important about themselves. I did a short assessment at the beginning of the week to learn more about each student’s specific math strengths and weaknesses. Math topics that we are going to be working on in the near future: place value, skip counting. If you would like to take a look at what your student struggled with to get ideas for next steps at home, please feel free to come by and I will share that with you :) We are just beginning time lines, and I have changed my mind about how I am going to be doing that activity, so you will not be getting a paper home that you need to help them with. Sorry about the confusion. In Reading this week some of the students continued to work on compare/ contrast, while others focused on word study. I showed them how to use the online children’s dictionary to look up unknown words. They really liked that experience, and I think that this would be a great activity to do regularly at home. Reminders:
- I am looking for a parent that is willing to dig us a hole to bury our time capsule in. We have not decided where on campus we want to bury it yet, but it will most likely need to be a fairly big hole. I am hoping to have the hole dug in the week before Exhibition, but I am open to ideas :) Please email me if you are up for it :) -October 31st and November 1st are Pizza and Spirit Days: The Spirit Days for October will focus on the "Reflection" Habit of Heart & Mind. Students are encouraged to dress up in a costume that symbolizes how they reflect on their school work, themselves and/or their world. One example is a student wearing her Brownie uniform because she has reflected that Brownies make the world a better place. Another might be a student who dresses as Leonardo Da Vinci because he reflected that his Da Vinci report didn't capture his best work. Students will have an opportunity to share their costume at Community Dialogue meetings. - ¡DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS CELEBRATION! Friday, November 1st, 5:00p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Da Vinci Design Please join us for some fun, food and music. Learn about this important celebration through our students. Come see their work and experience Latin American culture! Children are welcome to join us and learn about the día de los muertos! I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the week! Please let me know if you have questions/ concerns about anything :) Robin Welcome! I hope you are all having a wonderful week! We have been hard at work on our time capsule. Last week we finished up our newspapers and maps of the classroom, and this week we are starting on our self portraits. We looked at several famous self portraits and talked about how colors and shapes can be used to represent us as individuals and our feelings. So far the self portraits have each turned out very unique, and I have had the fun of watching the students look carefully into mirrors and translate what they see on to paper. The next few items that we have decided to create for the time capsule are time lines of our own lives, and artifacts that represent us. Your child will be bringing home a sheet next week that has the important events that they have decided to include on their time line, and they may need some help from you in finding the dates for these events. Please be sure to send the paper back to school when you and your child have finished adding information :) In math we learned a new game called Pyramid 10 which the students in the Tues/ Fri cohort LOVE. The Mon/ Thurs cohort is still learning the game, so I don't know if they feel as passionately about it yet. Here are the directions for Pyramid 10: I want to invite all of you to come by after school on any day when I do not have parent meetings, and let your child teach you the most recent math game that we have learned. This not only allows them to have the experience of teaching the game (which is very valuable) but also allows you to play the game at home with them :)
In reading we have been working on comparing and contrasting 2 different stories. We will continue with this for the next week and will also begin building our vocabulary using the Word Study Graphic Organizer. Reminders/ Announcements: - I am looking for a parent that is willing to dig us a hole to bury our time capsule in. We have not decided where on campus we want to bury it yet, but it will most likely need to be a fairly big hole. I am hoping to have the hole dug in the week before Exhibition, but I am open to ideas :) Please email me if you are up for it :) -Please Take A Minute To Give Us Feedback Da Vinci Schools wants to know how you feel about DVIA. Please take a minute to provide feedback through this quick survey. 100% participation is our aim because we want everybody's feedback. Please click through now, if you can (the survey is phone friendly!). -October 31st and November 1st are Pizza and Spirit Days: The Spirit Days for October will focus on the "Reflection" Habit of Heart & Mind. Students are encouraged to dress up in a costume that symbolizes how they reflect on their school work, themselves and/or their world. One example is a student wearing her Brownie uniform because she has reflected that Brownies make the world a better place. Another might be a student who dresses as Leonardo Da Vinci because he reflected that his Da Vinci report didn't capture his best work. Students will have an opportunity to share their costume at Community Dialogue meetings. I really enjoyed spending time with you and your child last week during SLC's! Thank you for coming in and allowing your child to share their learning with you :) Hope you have a great rest of your week! Robin Hello Hello, I cannot wait to spend the next two days helping your kids share their thoughts on their learning during Student Led Conferences :) They have been practicing and they are excited to spend this time with you! This week has been a good one, with a lot going on in all subjects. We started the task of measuring everyone's height in class, to include in our time capsule (this was their idea, the thought being that people in the future will want to know how big our class is.) It was an interesting opening to measurement, and I am going to be looking for more ways to bring this skill into our everyday practice at school. At the Work Journal meeting, many of you were interested in the games that we have been playing in Math Menu. Below, you will find instructions for several of them :) In reading, we are going to begin comparing and contrasting two different texts. This is one of the Learning Goals on Work Journal #3, and a simple graphic organizer that can be used to practice this skill is a Venn Diagram: Another Learning Goal that we will be working on is Word Study. Here is an example of a graphic organizer that you can use to build your child's vocabulary: In Writers Workshop we began peer editing on Monday/ Tuesday. We will continue this, and then begin on our final drafts of our narratives for the Time Capsule. After this, we will be moving on from narratives :) We are almost done with our Class Newspapers and Maps! The kids have been having a blast creating these for the TIme Capsule and we are looking forward to sharing them with you. Next week we will begin work on self portraits, and "I am..." poems to help the people of the future learn about who we are as individuals. I can't wait to see what your kiddos make :) Reminders: Work Journals are due this week! Please have them to me by Friday October 18th at the very latest! If you have any questions at all, please let me know :) Friday October 25th is Movie Night! Many of you came to one of the Work Journal Meetings and learned about Learning Menus from Patrick. Here are the requested notes from that meeting. . If you weren't able to make it, and would like some ideas on how to include more student choice in your homeschooling, please let me know! If any of you are feeling like you would like to have a more traditional Parent Teacher Conference, please let me know. I am available most days, before or after school.
I hope you are all having a lovely week :) Robin It has arrived! Our time capsule is now in the classroom and your lovely kids have thought of a million great ideas of ways to represent both themselves as individuals and the class as a whole :) About half of the students will spend the next week creating a newspaper to let the future know all about how our class works, and the other half will be making a map of the classroom! The excitement is awesome and I plan on a productive and fun week! You can support your student at home by exploring different kinds of newspapers and maps. In math we have begun working more with ten frames and base ten blocks. A great resource is the book "It Makes Sense! Using Ten-Frames to Build Number Sense," by Melissa Conklin. It can be purchased on Amazon for around $20 and it is full of great lessons and games to help students build their number sense. I also have a copy in my room which you are welcome to make copies of :) In reading we have been talking about "inference" using a variety of books. We will continue with this skill for a bit longer, as I feel that a number of students are still at the beginning of building an understanding of this skill. I have found that it is helpful to model this very explicitly for the students once or twice in a book, before guiding them through the process themselves. In writing we have continued with Writers Workshop, and have introduced the idea of sequence. At home, you can encourage your child to write stories where there is a beginning, middle, and end. I have them use little booklets when working on this skill in order to emphasize the passage of time. Here is the template that I use, just cut the paper in half and staple 3-4 pages together: Reminders:
-Picture Day is on Thursday/ Friday ( October 10th and 11th) -Work Journal Meetings are next Monday and Tuesday (October 14th and 15th) from 3:30-4:30pm. This is due to Student Led Conferences. - Student Led Conferences are on Wednesday and Thursday next week (October 16th and 17th). Students Led Conferences are a chance for students to take responsibility for their learning. As the name suggests the student should be doing most of the talking. Both the parent and the teachers are encouraging the child to share more about his/her work. The format allows for children to be reflective of their work and practice the real world skills of communication and leadership. Student Led Conferences are different from Parent Teacher Conferences in many ways. They are not an opportunity for parents to voice huge concerns or for teachers to answer specific questions. The time frame of Student Led Conferences is longer, and adult talk should be kept at a minimum. I am available most days before and after school to meet and have more traditional parent/ teacher conference conversations. If you have not had a chance to sign up here is the link: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0D48A8A729ABFE3-october I have added a feature to this blog to allow you to subscribe and have a notice sent to your email when I update the blog :) All you need to do is enter your email in the box at the right and hit "subscribe." You will then get an email asking you to confirm, and you will begin getting updates. I hope that you find this helpful, and let me know if there are any problems with it :) I hope you have a wonderful week! Robin Welcome! This past week was an exciting one. We flew our kites on Thursday/ Friday and had a blast getting them off the ground. We had interesting conversations about how this was similar/ different to the Wright Brothers' experience trying to get their airplanes to fly :)
This week we have been studying the artist, Horace Pippin, and we will be painting a portrait of him at the end of the week. We read the book, "A Splash of Red, The Life and Art of Horace Pippin," by Jen Bryant, which was a truly beautiful book about creative expression and perseverance. In Math we have continued to work on using different strategies to solve word problems, and have even begun exploring what different manipulatives have to offer us when solving problems. Starting next week, I am going to introduce the idea of "Math in the Real World" sharing. For the past 6 weeks we have had 2 students share during morning meeting. I had the idea of using this time to have the students start to explore all of the ways that we use math in everyday life. Your child will know in advanced when it is going to be their turn to share and they should try to find something to share with the class where they have found Math being used in the real world.. Examples: Recipes, board games, playground games, art, maps, knitting... don't forget that math includes shapes and patterns! I will be talking with them about this new type of sharing, but you may need to support them at home as well. This does not have to include bringing something in, they can always "talk share" about where they spotted math being used. A few reminders: Please fill out the Jumpstart Feedback survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HY8CFD5 Don't forget that next week is Picture Day! Please note that your child should still come to school in a polo shirt, but is welcome to change into something different before his/her picture is taken :) Student Led Conferences are coming up. I will be working on a plan for this time and will be in touch in the next few days! I hope this second learning plan is going smooth! Please let me know if you have any questions about the second Work Journal, classwork, the project, or anything else :) Have a great rest of your week! Robin |
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February 2017
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