Our Week – December 7

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.

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