This week has been full of reflection. We have been looking back at our work and what we’ve done this year. We are thinking of way to share our learning and that is a challenge. We have been doing that in our classroom at the same time that our school has been doing that as a whole.
This week representatives met as a school council to reflect on how the school has progressed toward meeting our school improvement goals. We always seem to look toward the future and with that view it always feels as though there is SOOOO much to get done. That view doesn’t allow us to savor the present – without reminders. Time to share and discuss allowed us to create a summary of how our school is working to improve and grow. Creating the presentation portfolio is supporting that same process of the children. It is giving them the opportunity to notice accomplishments and to realize they are many. It is a nice feeling.
Reflecting on the Year – Developing a Portfolio
We began our year by thinking about ourselves as learners and defining how we saw ourselves fitting into the multiple intelligences framework. We also tried to describe who we were as readers, writers and mathematician. We set goals for ourselves and tried to think of way we could measure our achievement of them. Throughout the year we looked back at the goals to ask, “Have we met them?” “Do we still want to work in them?” No one changed his or her ideas, but I do think the idea of what makes a worthy goal has begun to grow and develop. Goal setting takes time and practice.
While we were talking, reading and reflecting about those areas of learning, the children wrote poems and songs about those topics and we read them together. We are revisiting that writing now and reacquainting ourselves with the ideas of what it means to define yourself as a growing, improving, and changing learner, researcher, mathematician, writer and reader.
Recognizing Growth
This reflection process has given the children the opportunity to uncover the changes they have made throughout the year. They have been able to physical changes in themselves by looking at photographs through the year. They have learned that they have learned more efficient problem solving strategies. They have gained stamina with reading. Most of them are easily able to stick with one text and read for a full forty-five minutes- groaning when the end of the time comes and wishing for more. They understand that drafting does improve writing. And I think that most of the children know that if a task feels easy, it isn’t something they are learning from. It’s nice every once in a while, but a steady diet of simple and quick won’t get you anywhere.
I am sending home a conference sign up – because the children are going to share their work with you it will be best if we can spread them out. It can be challenging to hear if there are too many children presenting at one time. Our goal is to not have more than four at a time if possible. Please let us know when you would like to meet as soon as possible – that will allow us to arrange the room AND will let your child know exactly when his or her deadline is.
Again, if you have any time to help with typing we would be very glad for that.
Important Dates
- Thursday – June 6 – 7th Grade Storytelling from Around the World – 10:15 – 11:00
- Monday – June 10 – Student Led Conference and Portfolio Share – 3:00pm to 6:00pm
- Wednesday – June 12 – Celebrate America with the Parade of the States and National Parks – 5:00 to 6:30pm (sooner if we can arrange it so other commitments can be met as well)
- Thursday – June 13 – Student Led Conference and Portfolio Share – 7:15am to 8:30am
- Monday – June 17 – Classroom Book Celebration
- Tuesday – June 18 – Our last day of 3rd Grade