This week our social learning discussions have centered on honesty and our academic learning has been magnets, multiplication, mapping and research.  Last week we worked to tackle our problem of talking over each other during group discussion and blurting out so that many in the class were excluded.  I am happy to report that more children then ever are remembering to raise their hands before speaking out.  In addition, children have been able to wait before speaking out so that classmates have the “think time” they need to form an answer.  They deserve to feel proud of their efforts to consider others and how we can work together even better.

Honesty-Exaggeration-Lies

Last week when we reviewed the rules in our constitution I was surprised to find that the children were most concerned with honesty and really getting to know each other.  I had thought we might begin talking about respect or responsibility and self-control, but their major concern was honesty.  That led us in several different directions.  We talked about the difference between saying something that you later discovered was untrue and saying something that you knew was untrue from the start.  We talked about exaggeration and fibs and why they happen.  We all agreed there have been times when we say things to feel important or cool or to fit in that were not fully truthful.  We are working to be conscious of those times and trying to pay attention to the inner voice that guides our choices.

We connected honesty with integrity and discussed how honesty shows in our actions as well.  Honesty is hard when we might get in trouble.  Honesty is hard when we are not confident.  Being honest takes courage.  This work is clearly on your children’s minds as they struggle with their choices and feelings.  I have been very proud of their willingness to consider how what they say and do affects others.  Living in an honest world would feel great to all of us, but it would also be “weird” and “scary.”  Weird because “it would be so different from what happens now.”  Scary because “I don’t know if I’d be able to do it all the time.”  Talk to your child about the books we’ve read and the discussions we’ve had.  See how they think about honesty.

Multiplication – Repeated Groupings and Arrays

This week we expanded our understanding of multiplication to include an array model.  Arrays are rectangular representations of an amount – for instance 12 could be arranged in rectangles that are: 1 by 12, 2 by 6, or 3 by 4.  We are working to understand the process of multiplication and to build our fact knowledge.  We used hundreds grids this week to uncover the patterns of multiples and to see how what we know about skip counting can help us with multiplication as well.

Research and the World

 The children seem excited about what they are learning about their countries.  They like reading and trying to discover cultural and environmental differences.  They are curious about languages and alphabets.  They are curious about history and native people. They are curious about famous landmarks and historic places.  They are also looking for natural wonders and animals that are unique to their country.  The children have been learning how to use different online resources to gain information – we have been using CultureGrams and National Geographic. It’s rather exciting to be able to use laptops and to explore different sources for information.  Many of the children have shared how they are also working at home to learn about their countries.  Thank you for helping them with this work.  They need to talk about what they are learning and how they are understanding the information.  In the end it is surprising how alike people are in the world.   Children often try to make the differences between people and countries greater than they are so talking about it helps them understand.  It also directs their research by helping develop their next question.

Bits and Pieces:

• Our next challenge with Mr. Caron will be Thursday so children should be ready to be outside weather permitting.
• As of now the 100th day of school will be February 7.  We are going to continue the tradition of collecting food by the hundreds for the Seacoast Food Pantry.  Third grade is responsible for collecting cans of tuna or chicken.
• We are planning a science and social studies related field trip to SEE Science Center in Manchester on Wednesday, February 12.  Be on the lookout for information and permission slips in your child’s communication folder.
• Four families responded to the survey regarding the best night for our class museum.  For three of those four families Tuesday was a good night so we’ll go with that majority.  Our museum will be Tuesday, February 18 from 6:15 to 7:15.  Please mark your calendars and save the date.

After that gloriously long vacation it has been great to get back into the swing of school.  We have been working to reform our classroom community and consider what it takes to work together.  We have been developing our understanding of multiplication and have been exploring magnets to understand the power of magnetism.  We also began to do some research about the countries the children have chosen to become experts about.  It has been a busy full week.

Making Choices for Change – Social and Emotional Learning

Part of each day this week has been dedicated to reestablishing our classroom community and recommitting to our constitution.  This work has been focused around our school’s social and emotional learning guidelines for developing skills in self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making.

We think the choices we made in the fall when we wrote our constitution were good ones and we want to keep our rules the way they are.  We discussed whether we should add “self-control” to our list and decided that if we were being respectful then we’d be in control and so it was implied in what we had written.  Our constitution says:

We of 3E will:

Treat each other kindly

Be honest

Treat others as we would like to be treated

Respect others

Get to know each other, share and make friends

So that each and every one of us in 3E can do our best learning.

Now comes the tricky part of bringing these words to life.  When we tried to choose one rule to focus on, we struggled because they are all so interconnected.  We talked about our problems with interrupting one another during discussions and wondered if that was related to being kind, treating one another with respect or treating each other as we’d like to be treated.  In the end we chose to work on allowing everyone in the classroom to participate more equally by working to reduce interruptions and distraction and becoming more mindful of how we each choose to show respect.

We are working through a problem solving process where we first label our problem and talk about how it makes us feel.  A few people in the class said they didn’t mind if they were interrupted while the rest of the class did not appreciate interruptions at all.  We talked about feeling bad and disrespected when others talked over us and didn’t allow others to speak.  We also talked about the people who very rarely said anything in our class and wondered if that was because a few people were doing most of the talking.  We talked about why raising hands could be important so we could reduce these feelings of disrespect.

Our next step was to decide on actions each of us would take in order to solve our problem.  Most of the class was willing and able to write down what he or she would try to do so there was a more equal opportunity for everyone to participate.  Children wrote things like raising hands and acting as a role model, working to become more aware that they were speaking out and over and trying to allow everyone time to think before beginning to talk.  Our final step will be to make a plan and give it a try.  Our plan will include both a course of action and a way of monitoring our progress to our goal of decreasing interrupting and equalizing participation.  It will be interesting to see if we can conquer our problem. 

Global Geography – Learning More About the World

I hope you have heard about the country your child has selected to research and become an expert on.  This integrated unit of study is centered on developing informational reading and writing skills, understanding our place in the world, exploring cultural diversity and developing an understanding of maps.

We are learning how to develop our understanding by reading what we think are the easiest materials first and then moving on to more challenging texts.  This helps us build our understanding and allows us to make connections.  The fancy term is developing schema.  We are also learning how to gather information from visual resources and working to be careful to not generalize too much.

We are planning to share our research by creating a museum in our classroom.  We will be working to make displays to teach others about our countries.  Our museum will be set and open for families in the evening for an hour from 6:15 to 7:15 pm.  Families can tour the displays and ask the children to share all they have learned.  We are excited about this work.  We decided that the museum should be held during the third week of February.  We know it is unlikely that one day of the week is a perfect fit for everyone, but we are hopeful that if we set the date far enough in advance families will be able to make places.  Please look to the end of newsletter in your child’s folder for a survey.

Bits and Pieces:

• We’re learning about folklore in the library.  We will be exploring Cinderella tales from the countries we are researching to understand how the tales are shaped by culture and environment.
• Another aspect of SEL in our classroom this week has been working to define honesty.  We have begun to explore the differences between honesty, integrity, trustworthiness and honor.  We are discovering that honesty is bigger than just the words we say.
• Walking Sticks Challenge with Mr. Caron this week took a lot of courage and concentration this week.
• We are working with magnets to understand what they are, how they work and how they are important.  Right now they are fun to play with, but is there more we should know about magnetism?  We’ll be finding out in the next few weeks.