Dear Parents,
I hope you are all having a lovely break! I am writing to touch base about the upcoming Presentations of Learning. Our first semester Presentations of Learning (POL’s) are going to be held Dec 9th-20th. For our first POL of the year the students will be expected to present on one subject area (Reading, Writing, or Math) and one Habit of Heart and Mind (Reflection, Empathy, Collaboration, Flexibility, Perseverance, or Exploration). They will be expected to give their presentation to a panel, and answer questions regarding the material that they presented. They will also be expected to attend one older student’s POL during that 2 week period. I will be working with the Core 4 and 5 teachers to facilitate this. We will be spending this upcoming week preparing for POL’s. On Mon/Tues (Dec 2nd and 3rd) your student will come home with the start of an outline of their presentation, but they will still need some guidance at home to finish the outline. Please send the outline back on Thurs/ Fri (Dec 5th and 6th) so that they can review it with me. We will work to finalize this outline and write a final draft in class on Thurs/ Fri. They will bring home a final draft which they will need to rehearse at home. They will need to spend at least 15 minutes a day practicing at home in order to feel comfortable presenting at their POL. I will be sending you more information regarding the scheduling of POL’s. Please feel free to send any questions you have my way. Thank you so much for supporting your child’s learning. Sincerely, Robin I am pleased to say that Tuesday's Exhibition went great! I was so proud of all of the students! They did a beautiful job presenting at the Time Capsule stations, singing their hearts out, and putting the Time Capsule in the ground. I was very impressed with both their confidence and their enthusiasm. A big thank you to all of the families who came and helped us fill up our Time Capsule. I witnessed a lot of very interesting and thoughtful discussions about artifacts, time, and what it means to truly try to represent yourself. I am excited for Thursday's Exhibition, and look forward to seeing my Mon/ Thurs families then :) We are coming up on our Thanksgiving vacation (Nov 25th-29th) and I wanted to use this post to give you some new math games to try with your child. These games involve using a hundreds chart: . This is both an exciting and a busy time of year. After Exhibition is finished, we are going to be diving right into POL's. I will let you know more about what we are going to be doing when we come back from Thanksgiving break :)
I wanted to take a moment to tell all of you how truly grateful I am to be your child's teacher. I feel extremely lucky to get to spend my time doing such meaningful, challenging, and fun work, and it means a lot to me that you let me have such an important part in your child's life. So a big THANK YOU in the spirit of Thanksgiving! I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving, with lots of food and rest :) Robin Hello Everyone! I hope you had a wonderful long weekend with lots of rest :) We have begun to get ready to turn our classroom into a giant Time Capsule for Exhibition and we will be focusing on that for the next week or so. The Tuesday/ Friday group has had a chance to begin designing their stations for Exhibition, and on Thursday the other cohort will begin work as well! Here is a run down of the schedule. You will be expected to be at Exhibition from 5:00-6:30pm. For the first hour (5:00-6:00pm) we are going to be presenting our Time Capsule to guests while also teaching our guests how to make their own Time Capsule. Your child will be responsible for running one Time Capsule Station for half an hour. This will include them presenting the work that we made in class and fielding questions about it from guests. They will then show our guests how to create their own piece of work. For the half an hour that they are not scheduled at a Time Capsule Station, they will have a chance to walk around the school and experience all of the other classrooms J We will all meet up in class at 6:00pm for a short singing performance and a ceremony in which we bury the Time Capsule. Here is the schedule: It would be helpful if you practiced with your child over the next week as well. Here are some questions that they should practice answering. They should currently be comfortable with these ideas, but may need some guidance on how to answer clearly and with details.
What is a Time Capsule? Why is it important? How does the (Portrait, Timeline, poem etc.) represent you? (focus on the piece that they are in charge of) What is important to tell people in the future about ourselves? How does your (portrait etc.) do this? What have you learned about collaboration during this project? The students will have time to practice in class as well. Reminders: Work Journal #3 is due this Friday at 4:30pm. Please have them to me by then. Don't forget to make annotations on the Work Samples, and please do not turn in copies for Work Samples. I will have Work Journal #4 up on the Learning Goals section of my Digital Portfolio. If you have any questions about Exhibition please let me know :) Have a great week, Robin Happy Wednesday! This week has been one of our most productive ones yet! I feel like we have a real rhythm going lately and I have enjoyed watching your kids get into the groove of working hard and enjoying their final products. In math we have been working hard on our Timelines. Both cohorts have gotten really into their timelines and we have been working on sequence, how to pick important events, and how to represent these events so that other people can understand them. Both Patrick and I have enjoyed seeing your kiddos' personalities shine through this project, and have loved learning more about their lives. In reading we have been doing compare and contrast using different fiction and non fiction books. Some parents have been asking about ways to cover compare/contrast at home. A few interesting ideas that I saw in Work Journals was to compare contrast two recipes, and to compare/ contrast a traditional and modern fairy tale. You can use the regular venn diagram, or if you are looking for a slightly different graphic organizer, you can try the "double bubble." This is a variation on the venn diagram. The bubbles going down the center are for similarities, and the bubbles on the outside are for differences. The bubbles across from each other and on the outside should be matching differences (for example "the snake eats eggs," and "the bird eats bugs.") It is a slightly more organized way for the student to show the similarities and differences. You might have to create a much larger version in order for your student to comfortably write in the bubbles :) In writing we have started to work on "friendly letters" to people in the future. I think that letter writing is an excellent opportunity for meaningful writing at home, and I would encourage all of you to try it at home (letters to grandparents, the President etc). Here is a beginning template for them to use in order to remember the important parts of a letter: We are planning a little singing performance at Exhibition, so don't be surprised if you hear your kiddos singing at home :)
I will be letting you know more information about Exhibition in the next week. As of now, there is nothing that you need to be working on with your kids, but I will let you know if that changes. Reminders: - Please make sure that your kids bring their water bottles to class, and then take them home at the end of the day :) - Work Journal meetings will be next Tuesday and Thursday at 2:00pm in Patrick's room. I apologize for the change, but we are both hoping that this time will be convenient for more parents. As always, I am happy to meet with you before or after school if you are unable to make it. - I received both you and your child's ID cards today. I will be sending the student ID cards home with each student, but I am going to ask you to stop by before or after school to get your parent educator ID cards. -No school Friday (Nov. 8) and Monday (Nov. 11). Please let me know if you have any questions or if I can help support you in any way:) I hope you have a lovely long weekend, Robin |
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February 2017
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