We have had a busy and full week. Thank you for attending curriculum night. We hope it was a helpful overview of your child’s year. If you were unable to attend you will find the handouts in your child’s Friday envelop. Homework will begin next week so be on the lookout and help your child find time for some reading, working with math facts and word study each day. Thank you.
How We Are Smart – Multiple Intelligences Theory
We have continued exploring the theory of multiple intelligences. We have continued reading picture book biographies and memoirs to understand how people grow and change. Patricia Polacco, who didn’t read until fifth grade, became word smart. We know because she is a writer and an author. This week we read stories of Henri Rousseau, Gandhi, and Alan Rabinowitz. We can even make guesses about how fictional characters are smart using evidence from the action of the stories. Next week we will begin to identify and graph how we are smart. This is part of our work to explore self-awareness – one of the SEL pillars. If the opportunity arises you might to talk to your about his or her strengths and interests to see if they can name their own multiple intelligences – how they are smart.
Chromatography – Part 2
Our second experiment has left our room with a slightly pungent odor – the mix of vinegar and rubbing alcohol. After seeing how water effects black Crayola markers, the children each explore a question of their own. Most wanted to see what would happen with different colors. We learned that darker colors like black and brown were made of other colors and the water helped them separate out on the paper. Knowing this, we selected four different types of black markers and four clear liquids. We wondered what would happen to the marker in vinegar, rubbing alcohol, seltzer and water. The results were interesting to see and to speculate about.
We used experience as a springboard for beginning a research project – what questions would we want to explore as a scientist. We have questions about things like vultures and why people turn red when they are nervous, prehistoric animals and jaguars. It will be interesting to explore are questions and interests and to find a way to share and present our findings. You may want to ask your child what they hope to research, learn about and share. I suspect that several of the children may want to make some changes after they begin this process. And that’s okay – it part of the learning too.
Personal Narratives
We have completed our first draft. These stories tell of ordinary everyday things we do with our families. This week we worked from our circle and frame charts to make sure details and descriptions were added – especially to the middle of our story, along with our feelings and thoughts.
We learned about four different types of leads: snapshot, dialogue, onomatopoeia, and questions. After reading some examples from narratives we figured out how we had started our stories and chose a different type to lead to explore. We think that questions and dialogue might be the easiest leads to begin with when writing a story. We wonder if that will be the same with information and persuasive writing. We’ll have to see.
Bits and Pieces –
- We have our second challenge with Mr. Caron. If it is nice weather we’ll be outside. Be ready in case it is chilly for the challenge.
- We completed timed test in all four mathematical operations this week. I am very proud of our class. Everyone stayed relaxed and decided to do his or her best knowing that we have the year to practice and learn. Practice makes progress and now we know our starting point.
- Each day we begin our reading lesson with poetry – right now we are reading about reading and writing because we are thinking about our work as readers and writers to set goals for our year. The class enjoys reading them together and many of the children were inspired to write their own. They have put them on charts and we have been reading them. There are so many that we have begun having two poetry shares – one at morning meeting and the other at the opening of reading. The first set is a collection about many different things and the second set is about reading and writing at this point.
- We are continuing with The Quirks – Welcome to Normal. We are just getting the “meat” of the story. It is also helping us consider our own personal quirks and connect to how we are smart. We are having fun puzzling through how these characters both use and hide their magic.