Our Week – January 18

Isn’t it amazing that we are half way through the month and half way through the school year? Today was our 90th day of school. Your children are working on many different things – though deserve to be proud of their collective efforts.
Individually, I have to say many of the children could work on responsibility for best effort in neat, complete work as well as cleaning up after themselves and being respectful of our supplies and materials. Any gentle reminders about that lack of maid service and unlimited supplies would be appreciated. We have nothing to waste at our school and need to thoughtfully use what we have so we are able to accomplish wall we’d like in the complete school year.

3E’s Inquiry Museum
6:15 – 7:15 pm – Thursday, January 24

The children have been working diligently to create the displays for our museum. They have been writing up the facts they feel are most important to share and working to find ways to explain their understanding. Before you enter the museum please take time to read the letters and notes on the museum sign. They are intended to let you know some of what you may want to find out. There are display announcements, business cards and questions you can expect to find answers for as you tour the exhibits. The children are hoping you will ask them questions because they know more than their displays show. They have worked to become experts and are eager to share their interests with everyone.


I think you will smile to see what “being an expert” means to them – it is far different than what you or I are thinking. I have learned by helping the children move through this research project how different their understanding is than in years past. Generally the children would not copy a book – they can see the author’s name and recognize that as taking from another. They, however, have no problem copying from the Internet and claiming it is their own. It seem free for the taking to them. They know how to drag and drop. They know how to take screen shots. We have talked about this and used several different examples, but you will notice that many of the children have developed some very sophisticated sentences structures in their writing and a new vocabulary for their displays.
I will address this through the project’s assessment process to help the children understand what is acceptable use and what is not. Our next content exploration is Space. During this study the children will have a second opportunity to research and present their findings. Research and informational writing is something your child will do a great deal of in the second part of the year. I am looking forward to seeing how they develop, learn and grow. The museum will be a fun place to learn and explore.

Spelling Well and Using Writing Conventions

The children are taking more responsibility to slow down and spell well. They are more likely to use resources and check their work. I have noticed that some of them are working to remove their habits of capital letters in the middle of word or to notice a sight word that is often incorrect. They are becoming more aware that they must be aware of their habits in order to correct them.
The children are also learning more and more about sentences. “Sentence” is an abstract concept when you stop to think about it. Here are just a few of the words that come into play in order to consciously and purposefully write sentences well: nouns and verbs, something or someone doing something, simple, complex, compound, statement, question, exclamation, interrogative, and interjection to name a few. When we, as adults, use the word “sentence” a piece of some of these things come to mind. We took years to piece this understanding together – your children will too. I am pleased to notice in just a few weeks more of the children are thinking of punctuation and making an effort to use end marks for sentences, commas in lists and quotation marks to indicate conversation. Please talk to your child about what they know and what they are working to do. Noticing when you see punctuation in their work and gentle reminders every once in a while will go a long way in encouraging them to use what they know. Practice will extend their understanding too. Thank you for your help with this.

Book Clubs – developing a plan to record comprehension

This week we began book clubs. There are two main goals for this work. The first is to have conversations about books and reading in small groups. The class will learn to use the Open Forum format for discussion to deepen understanding. The second goal is to help each of the children become aware of different strategies they can use to develop their comprehension. This builds on the work we have begun in responding to our chapter read – aloud, Wildwood. We will learn what helps develop understanding and what distracts. I am finding a group of children who begin to add so much personal detail based on a connections to the text that they actually distract themselves and do not understand well. For example the story was about going on a vacation and arriving to find the cottage extremely run down. The paint was peeling and the porch was falling away from the building. It was clearly old. The students held on to the old part of the description and decided that the story was about a vacation at grandpa’s and because it was with old grandpa, it was really fun. The connection was made but it distracted from understanding. The vacation was actually to the beach, there was no grandpa and the old cottage was just the beginning of a string of bad events that ended in a wish for a better vacation next year.
We’ll be working with monitoring for meaning, visualizing, questioning and verifying, predicting and inferring. The books clubs will be a great place for the children to practice and come to understand what readers need to do.


Bits and Pieces –
• Star Gazing – February 11 at 6:30 pm – weather permitting. This is part of our space study. More details will follow.
• Cans of Beans for the 100th day of school – the goal is to have at least 100 cans here at school by January 30th. If we all bring in two cans, we’ll easily reach our goal and support a great community service. Thank you.