Our second week of school has come to a close.  We are working our way into our routine.  I am learning how to plan and organize things for our class so everyone can be successful and the class is coming to understand how they can work together so everyone learns.  We are having fun.

Our learning focus for the first month of school is becoming more aware of ourselves as learners, friends and members of a community.  We have to be true to ourselves, but we also must be respectful and aware of others.  This is something all 8 and 9 year olds are learning.  They are aware of the models of around them and are becoming more aware that they are in charge and responsible for the choices they make.

Knowing Ourselves – Social Emotional Learning Focus

This week we began learning about the eight different intelligences defined in Multiple Intelligence (MI) theory to think about how we are smart and how we best learn.  We read different biographies and autobiographies to see if we could identify the ways these people were intelligent.  There are some things we cannot know from the book, but the children had amazing thoughts as they explained how the stories shared evidence of the different ways these people were smart.  We learned about Snowflake Bentley, Michael Jordan and Patricia Polacco.  We will use this work as a springboard for identifying our own four top intelligences.  The most exciting thing is that we are able to make our intelligences grow and change.  We can do anything we want to do with effort, determination and confidence

Learning Habits that Lead to Success

Along with learning about MI theory, we have been exploring different part of school learning to establish a clear foundation of capabilities as the year begins.   We have been talking about our habits and choices help us achieve our goals.  We are all learners.  We have noticed from our reading that most people don’t have things happen quickly or easily.  People work at things for a long time – years and years even.  Snowflake Bentley didn’t get one picture of a snowflake in his first year of trying.  We have noticed people try in different ways and they have help, support and opportunity.  Patricia Polacco (children’s book author and illustrator) didn’t read until she was in 5^th grade – and she was teased about it mercilessly.  We are trying to take notice of what we are thinking and what we are doing.  By being more aware we think we can become even stronger learners.  We have more to think about with this as we figure out how we are smart and what we do to help ourselves learn.

Growing As Readers and Writers

 We have been exploring how we have grown and changed as readers and writers this week.   We have built on our reading histories and worked to identify our reading habits. Many of the children have settled into books that are just right for them and they are fully immersed in reading.  Many others continue to look for books that are engaging and understandable.  There is a lot to choose from in our classroom so it takes time.  They are becoming more comfortable with that choice and in knowing where books that may interest them and support their growing abilities are. Hopefully by the end of next week everyone will be settled into a reading routine and will be feeling confident about book choices and working independently with reading.

We have discussed interests and passions – things you could do for hours and never notice the time passing.  The children each chose one of their passions to create a “paper” blog post.  They wrote and illustrated the post.  The next step is to make comments.   The class is excited about blogging.  We developed some criteria to guide our commenting.  They are:  Be kind and positive.  Ask questions to start a conversation.  Make connections with the post so the blogger knows you read it and cared.  Only use one exclamation point or one question mark.  Capitalize I.

I am impressed with their list.  We are going to practice our commenting skills later today – Friday.  We’ll see how it goes.

We are beginning our writing year learning more about narrative writing.  Everyone has written their first narrative piece.  We are going to use that as our foundation to see how we grow as we learn how to add interesting details through adjectives and adverbs or how we can grow interest by exploring different types of sentences.  Our class seems interested in writing and sharing.  It will be fun to see how this grows.

Bits and Pieces – 

• We have continued to find ways to identify the information we use when making estimates.  See if you child can tell you how they know an estimate is reasonable.
• We have been exploring the ideas of “a lot” and “a little” when applied to amounts and numbers.  Ask your child about their collection of 100 and how they worked to organize the amount while working with partners.

• We are exploring the world as scientist.  We know that scientists observe, look for details and facts.  As your child how the leaves they selected to observe were the same and how they were different.
• We are working to write a letter to Vivian Vande Velde, the author of our first chapter read aloud.
• We began our second chapter book together, Emily’s Fortune.
• Ms Losson, a UNH student in the Exploring Teaching class, will be joining our class for the first semester on Monday and Wednesday afternoons.
• For a general overview of the Common Core State Standards and what we at NHS are doing to address them come to the PAL meeting on Tuesday at 6:30
• Remember to save the date for the Grade 3 Curriculum Night – Thursday, September 26 at 7 pm in the Mrs. Oliver’s music room.