I had thought that I’d leave the Book Club book reviews at the top of the blog for a bit and then add the weekly update.  I was all set to do that, got out the computer, sat down at the desk and noticed that the wireless connection was off.  I walked the computer closer to the hub, still no connection.  I looked over at the router…”oh…we have no power.”  That was Sunday, but today we do and sun shining through the snow-laden trees is just stunning.  Full Moon tonight – I hope everyone has the chance to see it wherever you are.  We’re going to try snowshoeing – I hope to get some great photographs.

Our week began with snowshoeing…

Morning Meeting Conversations

SEL – self-awareness, self-management and responsible decision-making

         Every day we begin with a morning meeting.  The week before a vacation is always tough.  I am hoping we’ll wrap things up and complete different projects and the children are excited about things to come.  We are definitely working from different vantage points.  It is not always the best time for focus and quality work.  Because of that we spent some time talking about learning, school learning and how to “demonstrate” learning by what you do and how you do it.  Here are some of the things your children wrote as a result of that conversation:

“Learning takes you on adventures.”

“Learning shows when you take time while you are working and make sure you do what you need to do.  You need to stay focused.”

“Learning is like a trophy.  You have do work for it and do it like you have to do it.”

“I want to learn all the things we are doing and understand them and get ready to learn new things too.  I think that’s a good goal; to care about school because when I care about things I do my best because they are special.”

“Learning means a lot to me.”

“I like learning because it is fun to learn.  You learn everyday.”

“If I didn’t learn then I would never get to do math clubs or enter a spelling bee.  And if I never did any of that my life would be miserable.”

“Without learning you wouldn’t know anything.”

“Learning is important to me because I am curious a lot and in school I learn some of the questions.”

“I try my best to stay focused but sometimes I get off track.”

“I care about learning because I want my head to be full, not empty.  My learning shows in my work.  I like learning because it is fun.”

“I don’t really care about learning.  I just want to have fun. “

“I love to learn.  It’s very fun like reading, writing, math and inquiry work.”

“Homework:  I have to do it right when I get home because then I can do stuff.  I have to be asked to put it in my log.”

“I pay attention and listen in all the classes.”

“Learning means to me:  spending time learning about something even if you’re not good at it so you at least know how to do it.”

I appreciate their honesty and their effort.  It is exciting to work with such a committed and motivated group of learners.  We do have fun together!

How Do Each of Us Go About Understanding?

            During February the children have been working to capture their inner voices and become more aware of what’s happening in their minds as they read and work to understand.  As a way to see if we were changing and growing the children were asked to try to write more extensive reading responses – “try a page” each day at the completion of our reading block.  The challenge of that was time and doing it consistently enough to have it move from a burden to a learning tool. (We have to keep trying with that.)  Another piece of this work has been to caption the chapters in our current chapter read aloud, George’s Secret Key to the Universe.  This has meant listening, perhaps sketching about the events in the chapters and then going to the read-aloud journal to write a sentence, a phrase and a word to capture the author’s main idea.  Still another piece of this work has occurred in club discussions and in whole class reading sessions.  This work often leads to questions to be dealt with in open forums or images to be shared with each other.  When everyone creates a picture of the same text it is really interesting to see what stands out for different learners or how they think about meaning.  We have been visualizing, questioning, synthesizing and rereading to learn more.

In addition to the work the children have been doing during the reading block they have also been working to use and develop those same habits for understanding during our writing and research block.  Each student is researching both a space topic and a topic of independent interest.  Space is such an unimaginable topic – it is so vast and so vibrant and new.  It is exciting to explore and dream and realize the endless possibilities open to the children.  It is sometime mind-blowing as we work to understand.

Fractions – part of a whole and part of a set

            We have been exploring fractions – though I have now been calling it that.  We have been talking about what would be fair.  We’ve been thinking – if this was something you loved more than anything else, would you be satisfied with the piece you received.  It is easy for the children do think of rectangles being cut into halves and quarters, but not so easy to think of thirds and sixths.  It is easy to consider cutting circles into pie pieces when there are even slices.  It is an interesting challenge where larger numbers represent smaller amounts.  Hmmmm…

 

 

 

 

 

…and ended with a music share

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you are all having a wonderful vacation – leave a comment if you have the chance.  The class will be very excited to know you have been checking out their work.