Please remember to bring “Secret Friend” Gifts in on Monday.  Check your directions and remember to keep the secret and the surprise. 

Wasn’t it November just a minute ago?!  It’s hard to believe that we have reached the middle of December already and that in just five more school days we’ll be done for 2012.

What is Success?

SEL  – Developing Self-management and awareness skills along with social awareness

We continued our conversations about success.  I’ve been trying to understand why so many of the children are not following directions to do work that feels pretty straight forward to me.  There are enough of the class who are not completing the work that I know they do not understand it is as I do.  I have been teaching long enough to know that they aren’t trying to be incorrect or incomplete and so I asked them:  “Can you be successful without trying?”

The two options to sign in under were “yes, I think you can” and “no, I don’t think you can.”  13 signed in saying “yes”, 5 signed in saying “no” and one forgot.   Not what I was expecting and so I asked them to be ready to explain their choice.  At some point in between one day and the next I got it – LUCK!  You can have lucky, serendipitous breaks.  The next day I asked:  “Is there a difference between success and luck?”  19 of the children signed their names under “yes.”

When they wrote their tales of success with or without trying and they were indeed about the time the shot went in or the goal was scored or they found something unexpected.  In our conversation most of the children agreed that the kind of success we were talking about for our class was a lasting, building success.  We were talking about developing habits that will build and grow, that we can count on using all the time.  We all agreed that being lucky is great – we’d like that more of the time, but success is something we could and would work for.  To complete the work we have to check directions, slow down and make sure the assignment is complete and meeting expectations.  It is important to remember first and fast are always best.

What the Research Says

SEL  – Developing Self-management and awareness skills along with social awareness

            I am reading How Children Succeed by Paul Tough.  In it he is exploring the question:  Why do some children succeed and others don’t?  One section shares work happening in different schools to assess habits for success along with academic growth.  They have a character report card along with the academic one. After long years of study the habits that have been identified as consistently leading to success are: grit, self-control, social intelligence, curiosity, gratitude, optimism and zest.  In class we looked at this list and compared it to the 12 habits we had defined the week earlier.  Most our habits fall in the self-control area with some hinting at social intelligence and grit.  We like optimism and zest especially.  This list feels happier than ours and we’d like to have time to combine the two.

The Magic Hula Hoop

SEL  – Developing social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making

Our challenge with Mr. Caron this week was deceptively simple.  We were divided into two teams and asked to hold out our pointer fingers parallel to the floor.  We were asked to hold our hands as though we might be clapping so we wouldn’t be tempted to hook our fingers around the hoop.  With those directions the hoop was balanced on the outstretched fingers and the direction as given to lower the hoop to the floor.  The hoops went up – accusations and directions were called across the groups.  Mr. Caron restarted the groups – the hoops went up.  Finally with much determination, focus, and calm supportive comments to organize the movements that hoops went down.  It was a perfect illustration of how optimism, zest and grit do lead to success, while blame and put-downs do not.

At first Mr. Caron told the class that the hoops had sensors in them and could feel when the group wasn’t working together.  Later he let them know that that magic was within them and the choices they made.  It is a class story that we will use throughout the year to remind us of the positive habits and actions that will help us become more successful as we work throughout the year and beyond.

3E Wonders of North Hampton

           

We have had a challenging time selecting our top seven Wonders.  Five of them were easy to select – they were clear class favorites.  The remaining three were all tied – and remained so after three different votes.  The children worked in three groups to develop persuasive paragraphs explaining why their site should be selected as a wonder.  They had a short amount of time to collect and organize the facts in a way that would convince the majority of the class to vote for that site.

The final vote was only off by one so it remained close right up to the end.  Our list is:  Centennial Hall, The Green and Mile Marker, Drake’s Farm, The Depot, The Fogg family cellar hole and cemetery, Ogden Nash and the Little River Cemetery and the Fish Houses.  We will put our final list in with the other two classes to see what the grade’s top seven are.  It will be interesting to see how the list changes as the stories are told.  That is our last part of this project – we are working to tell the stories of these sites and so we can share that information with you.  Our goal is to create a post on our blog that will show you to wonders and tell the stories so you can go on a virtual tour.

Bits and Pieces

• Mrs. Sherouse showed the class how to access some of the ebooks that are available to the children through the library.  She gave them a sheet of user names and passwords for the many resources we have available through the eboard.  It was bright pink – if you didn’t see it you might want to ask for it and put it in a safe place.  It will allow you child full access to the eboard information resources and materials because they can login from any computer.
• In planning for our Museum in January we made a list of things we know make museums interesting and fun to be in.  Along with those we listed things we would like to make sure we are prepared for.  “Make people inspired” was first on our list.  I think our class’ ideas and effort are inspiring.
• Ask your child about symmetry and sewing and Wildwood.

It was wonderful to see you at the Readers’ Theater Plays.  The children really enjoyed themselves and having the opportunity to perform in such a different setting.  The children seem to agree, “It was scary, but it was fun and exciting.”  They had a real sense of accomplishment.  Thank you for coming and helping us with that project.

Sassafras Springs Grows

            We know that a map is a picture of a place.  Most maps have a title, labels, symbols, keys, and a compass rose.  Now that the plays are over, we have all of our class together all of the time and we are hopeful that we will soon be able to put these finishing touches on our three-dimensional map of Sassafras Springs.  We have most of the houses and the people complete.  The roads have been laid out and Liberty Creek is flowing through the edge of town. The homes and stores have been labeled and we are working to create a sign sharing the title of the map and illustrating some of the Wonders we liked from that story.  It is a fun project from the watermelon patch to the outhouse in the woods.

North Hampton Wonders

            The children have selected their top eight Wonders and we can only have seven.  The children had an easy time selecting the top four Wonders – Centennial Hall, The Green and Mile Marker, The Fogg Family Cemetery and cellar hole behind the school, Ogden Nash and the Little River Cemetery.  The remaining four have the same number of votes – we’ll have to learn to be persuasive and hone our persuasive writing skills.  Our goal will be able the share our completed list next week, along with our persuasive stories.  Which places will be on our “Wonders” list:  The Depot, The Town Hall, Samuel A. Dow’s store, The Fish Houses, Drake Farm or John Dearborn’s Garrison marker?

As our two-dimensional map of North Hampton grows and becomes a reality we’ll share our stories behind the Seven Wonders of North Hampton.  Our town has an interesting history – we wonder at the other stories there might be found if we just begin asking.

Money Math

This week our math thinking has centered on money.   We been totaling coins, solving and creating riddle for each other to solve.  Our math problems are all dealing with amounts of money – both numbers of coins and their values.  It is still working with hundreds, tens and ones (sometimes thousands), but with a twist that seems less familiar.  Children have often had to use multiplicative reasoning to equalize the values – this is something we do automatically.  They do not yet.  It may seem confusing when you look at your child’s work – they know that ten 10’s is 100, but they don’t seem to know that ten dimes is a dollar.  If we give them the opportunity and time to develop this understanding they will.  With practice and different experiences they will make these connections and become more flexible with the mathematical thinking and reasoning.

Habits for Success

            We continued our discussion about how we choose success.  We generated a list of habits and now we have to consider if we are working in ways that allow us to be successful in our learning and friendships.  We are learning how to take on challenges that make us proud of what we are doing.  We are considering ways to stay focused and working purposefully.  We have noticed when we are more successful as a class and when we are less so.  A few of the children are able to think about what they can do to change their habits (talk with a soft voice, stay in their seats, work to keep comments and interruptions at a minimum), but most of the children are able to identify what others are doing rather than to reflect on themselves. – just as we would expect.

We’ll keep working on developing this awareness to help the class know how they can choose habits for success, both personally and as a class.  It is challenging to realize that you are not being successful when you are having a fun conversation with your friend during writing time.  It is difficult to recognize that sharing information just learned from your research is interrupting the work of the other students and so lessening our success.  It has been interesting for the children to realize that choices are not “good” or “bad”.  They realize that no one is doing anything “bad” – but if the goals are to learn how to work together and complete projects and assignments in a certain amount of time many choices keep us from doing our best.

Monitoring personal choices is our goal – we’ll keep working at this.

Bits and Pieces –

• Miss Hunt spent her last day with us this week.  We have enjoyed having her as part of our class during her semester class at UNH exploring teaching.
• Wildwood – our present chapter read-aloud – is complex and exciting.  Prue and Curtis are each in different parts of the Wood.  They are trying to figure out how the magic works and whether our suspicions about the Dowager Governess, the coyotes, the birds and now the Governor Regent will play out.  See if your child can explain what he/she finds most interesting and puzzling about this story as it unfolds.
• Weather permitting we’ll have an outdoor challenge on Tuesday morning.  It may be quite cold at 9:30 when we go out.

I have enjoyed and appreciated meeting with so many of you this week to discuss your children’s progress, ways to support their goals and continued growth.  I am excited about the work we will begin through the independent research project, the Wonders work and our study of maps, geography and history. We have a lot going on.

What Leads to Success

This week we have been considering success – what is it and how can we help each other achieve it.  It is interesting to stop and really think about “success” to realize that in every moment we have a choice.  We all agree that success is a good thing.  We all hope for it.  We are beginning to understand that success in the moment and success in the future are quite different ideas.  It seems as though the class realizes that success isn’t always easy – especially if you are making choices to try something new or push your understanding.

This week we have been trying to notice moments of success for our class as a whole.  We have been looking for examples of successful behaviors in books and throughout the day as we are working together.  We agree you have to persevere (“don’t give up” is how we have talked about it in class), problem solve and try.  It is best if you are positive – but that isn’t always possible especially when you’ve been trying to the point of feeling discouraged.  Ask you child about Carumba, the cat who couldn’t fly or Jack from Clever Jack Bakes a Cake.  We are all working toward success, but it is not a smooth path all the time.

Persuading Others

We have begun exploring persuasion.  The children are trying to choose their top Wonders – each child has made his or her selections and we have narrowed our list from 18 to 11.  The children have been writing to persuade others to support their Wonder choices.  They are working to state their opinion with a main statement, support it with at least three detailed facts and a concluding statement.  To be honest we have not been able to do much of this work this week – our play practices have used a great deal of our time this week.  I am hoping we are further along next week.  Right now our map of North Hampton is a bit empty.

Mapping Sassafras Springs

Our map of Sassafras Springs is coming along nicely.  Most of our buildings are complete, along with some of the characters.  We have a plan of how we imagine the layout of the town and are in the process of completing our vision.  Perhaps next week our maps will be complete.

Discovery Exploration – Independent Research

Each morning our day begins with a variety of projects.  This week children have been exploring various research topics.  They are learning to research on the computer.  At first most of the children thought they could type in each of their questions, copy down the answer and move on to the next.  They felt frustrated by the “no match found” messages they received.  Little by little they are coming to realize that research doesn’t work that way.  Many of the children have realized that books are more helpful at the start and others are realizing that searching the topic more broadly helps them discover more information.  They are learning to use the computer and different search engines more efficiently.  They seem excited by the information they are discovering and are already planning the different ways they can share their expertise with you.

Through other Discovery Time choices children have been able to turn recyclables into a wide variety of objects with some masking tape, markers and imagination.  Some of the children have explored a variety of maps, magnets and games like Bananagrams  – for spelling and word study – and Exact Change – for money and computation work.

Bits and Pieces –

We have begun a new chapter read-aloud, Wildwood.  It is a new genre – fantasy, adventure.  We have met Pru and Curtis, the main characters and we have moved from the city of Portland, Oregon into the Impassible Wilderness in search of Mac.  Ask your child to tell you more.

Bad Boys and The Web Files are nearly ready for the performance at Newington on Tuesday.  Bad Boys at 6:00 and Web Files at 7:15.

We are focusing more on subtraction and moving onto a beginning exploration of fair shares and dividing groups as we learn about fractions.

Another week gone by – zoom!  It is amazing to realize that the first third of our year has nearly come to a close.  Thank you for supporting your child with their student led share and goal setting conference.  The children each did a wonderful job selecting, describing and organizing the work they shared.  It took most of the fall to work through each part of the process.  Knowing yourself as a learner and a friend is an important part of our social and emotional learning curriculum – only through awareness can you bring about change in yourself and accept the diversity of others.  It seems as though the children each know themselves a bit better as learners.  They know how they are smart and how that is both unique from everyone else but also similar to everyone else as well.  They know they can each achieve whatever they set the minds toward doing.

The History of Our Town

            We had a perfect day for our Wonders tour through North Hampton.  It will be interesting to find out what the children remember from the day.  They seemed amazed to know that George Washington, General Lafayette and Benjamin Franklin had all actually been to their town.  Yesterday they may have stood in the exact spot where those famous people had once been. While at the Dearborn Garrison marker we learned that Henry Dearborn had been Thomas Jefferson’s Secretary of War.  We saw the mile marker on Post Road and learned of Ben Franklin’s commitment to making sure people could communicate through a common postal system.  He felt that information and informed citizens were important for liberty.  We learned about the four-room School House at Centennial Hall and wondered what they auditorium looked like – guessing it might be like our cafeteria space.  At Drake Farm after learning the history of the Drake family and their efforts to keep the fledgling colony safe from raids and attack we got to visit the donkeys out back.  They were very cute, but so many of us overwhelmed them.

In the town center we learned about Samuel A Dow’s store – a place where you could buy everything!  We learned about the Town Hall and the Library.  We learned that the jail was downstairs and decided we would not like to visit.  We noticed that our Town Hall as one of the few remaining Paul Revere bells.  We’re lucky it wasn’t worn out by all the ringing calling everyone to the Meeting House like so many others.  From the Town Hall we walked over to the train depot.  We learned that how some people loved the train, while others did not.  It was great when the farmers could sell their crops and visitors could come to our area.  It was not so great when people left town to work in Boston – running a farm took a lot of people and North Hampton needed everyone – and leaving town meant taking your business elsewhere.  The coming of the train signaled a real time of change for our town.

Beyond the school we stopped at the Little River Church.   We had discovered that church and going to church was a very important thing in the olden days and yesterday we learned that the state court made laws about who could have churches and where.  North Hampton had two churches that eventually joined into one.  We stopped by Ogden Nash’s gravestone – we’ll be learning more about him today when the 8^th graders come down to perform “Custard the Cowardly Dragon” for us.  We learned about the Fish Houses, the Seaside Garden, the Union Chapel and Fuller Garden.  We even saw the site where Franklin Pierce had lived during the summer.  It is an empty lot now and the house once there is in Hampton.  Can you imagine how they moved it?

A HUGE thank you to the seventh and eighth graders who volunteered to be docents at each of the sites.  They had lots to share and answered many of our questions about dates and time and years.

Choosing Wonders

            Now that we gathered some of the stories and history of our town we have decisions of make.  Back in our classroom we’ll search for a bit more information to fill in some of the details about the people and places we may have missed.  We’ll work to complete the stories that go along with each site as we decide and vote on the official 2012 Seven Wonders of North Hampton will be.  We’ll be working to build a map of our tour and thinking about rich history surrounding our community as we decide.  I wonder what you will hear at home – you may want to ask your child which site he or she feels was most interesting and why.  They only have bits and pieces of information and understanding at this point.  They need help fitting it into place and time.  Right now it is all jumbled in a “way back then” setting along with the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.   If it comes up in conversation your help with that would be greatly appreciated.

We had a wonderful day.  The children are happy to know that North Hampton has a rich history and exciting past.

Bits and Pieces

• Ask your child to tell you about The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs.  Collecting “wonders” may have done the same thing for Eben it is has done for us.  Somehow looking and noticing makes everyday things seem different.  The ordinary becomes extraordinary when you find the story behind it.
• We are beginning an independent research project.  The children have listed possible topics and taken the time to write down all they know already about their topic along with a few questions they hope to answer.  What makes a good question? How do you take information from many places and make it your own? How much information and understanding does it take to become an expert?  When you share the information with others, how can you help them understand?
• November 20 – Report Cards come home digitally – these will have codes, but no written comments.  We will meet in the following two weeks for Parent – Teacher conferences.
• December 4 – Readers’ Theater Plays at Barnes and Noble – hopefully you found the permission slip yesterday and know the schedule for the evening.

Have a wonder – full weekend!