Reflections on Learning – Developing Portfolios

S.E.L. Learning

            We are coming full circle in our work together as a class in 3E.  We began the year by thinking about ourselves as learners.  We explored “how we are smart” and learned about multiple intelligences.  We discussed habits of success and talked of how our choices either help or hinder us as we strive to meet our goals.   We worked to describe who we were as learners, readers, writers, and mathematicians.  Now at this point in the year we are looking at that collection to work to see how we have changed.  We are wondering how we the same and how we are different.

This is a challenging process, but important. It is difficult to describe changes in yourself.   It’s not the same as it was in the earlier grades when the artifacts made growth obvious.  It is no longer as evident as when the first books read had three word sentences and the later books had four or five sentences a page.  No longer is it growing from writing one sentence that is sort of readable to writing several with mostly correct conventions. For your children it is as if they are trying to describe learning to walk or ride a bike after you’ve been doing it for a few years – it’s hard to recall the specifics. I admire their efforts to describe themselves and their accomplishments.

Endeavors and Dreams

S.E.L. Learning       

            As part of this reflection process we have also been thinking of who we are as people in the world.  Two weeks ago we read If I Never Forever Endeavor and from that book the children tried to describe different goals they could set for themselves both in and out of the classroom (whether it was this year’s or next).  I had just finished reading The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind and his endeavor was amazing to me both because of what he had accomplished and that he had accomplished them under conditions of such grave hardship. I shared what I had learned about him.  This week we branched out to consider how we influence and impact others.   We read The Three Questions and wondered along with the boy in the book how we can be good and do the right things.  We wondered:  What is the best time to do things?  Who is the most important one?  What is the most important thing to do?  We also read Dreams Around the World, which led us to an interesting discussion about how people around the world live in so many different way and yet are so much that same.  That is how our “dream” collecting homework came about.  We are looking forward to discovering more about plans and dreams in the days to come.

Writing For Publication

            We have two of these projects going on right now.  One is the completion of our vacation stories.  Most of the children have completed the drafting process – they wrote two and three different drafts – where they added details, experimented with different leads and explored how adding sections of dialogue can help writing show rather than tell the events.  Some of the children surprised me with the effort to consider work choice and sentence variety in order to make their everyday events shine.  Most of the children are ready to work on illustrations of their typed stories.

Our other writing project is informational writing.  The children are well on their way to identifying the seven Wonders of their states or national parks.  The informational paragraphs that they write for those will be placed in flip books and put on display with their topographical maps we hope to make of each place.  I have to say that most of the children know what a paragraph is at this point and understand about lead sentences and how to make a piece flow by connecting one paragraph to the next.  It may not always happen, but they are making that effort.

 

Becoming Proficient and Efficient with Facts and Problem Solving

            This week we have been revisiting problems that we first solved in September to see if we can solve them with more efficient strategies.  We have learned the standard algorithm for addition and subtraction, while we still use expanded notation and partial products for solving multi-digit multiplication.  The children are working to keep track of all the trading and regrouping they have been doing with base ten blocks or with pictures using only numbers on the page.  We are in our working through our first attempts and the children are seeing how it works and how it is done in just one problem.   “We only have to write one (equation) and it’s done.”  Subtraction is a struggle.  Many of the children still feel more comfortable with adding on through using a number line.  We will continue our work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bits and Pieces –

• We enjoyed Deborah Wiles this week.  Her advice of writing about what you know, what you feel and what you imagine resonated with our class.  As the children wrote this week they talked about how they could use things from their lives but put them in fictional pieces.  “It like when we learn true facts from fiction,” one boy said.  “Like in the baseball mystery I am reading.”
• Tuesday, May 21 we have our last Outdoor Challenge of the year with Mr. Caron.
• On May 22 I’ll be attending a conference and will be away from school.
• The Memorial Day Assembly is Friday, May 24.  The children will be singing and should try to wear red, white or blue.
• Drafts of Float Plans should be submitted by Friday, May 24
• Our Celebration of America and Parade of the States and National Parks is June 12

Have a fabulous weekend!