Happy New Year!  We hope you had an enjoyable and restful vacation.  It has taken the full week to get back into the swing of school.  It has been a chatty week – everyone excited to talk about the video game conquests and ways that have been found to vanquish different foes at different levels.  Lots of whispered gossip, and stories told to some and not others in the hall and classroom.  This chatting has taken up much of our learning time this week.  I know the class was excited to see each other and it was a full moon.  I hope, though, that we can encourage the children to consider their goals in school.  We reviewed our class rules and did establish that fact that school was a place for learning and growing and for helping each other do his or her best.   With your helpful reminders, we can hope that next week brings renewed focus and attention to our classroom work.

SEL – Gratitude

This week we have thought about what we are grateful for.  We have thought about favorite things and things we’ve become attached to.  We’ve read and illustrated version of the song, My Favorite Things and Owen by Kevin Henkes.  We’ve tried to take time to notice the things we forget are gifts like lights and running water, heat and shoes.  We read Two Sandals, Four Feet about life in a refugee camp.  And we have stopped to notice the gifts of nature.  Snow by Cynthia Rylant led us to that discussion.  Pausing to notice all our gifts – great and small – leads to appreciation and happiness.  Happiness allows people to be more available to learning and understanding.  We’ll be exploring gratitude for the next few weeks trying to notice more of the daily gifts we receive.

Information Writing – Teaching Others

Our classroom museum will be on January 22 – we are gathering feedback from families before deciding on the time.  Please save the date.

The class determined that they’d be ready to share their research and teach others what they have learned on January 22. This is the culminating event of a self-directed inquiry project.  You’ve been reading about this for weeks and know that each student selected a topic he or she wondered about and would like to research as a scientist.  They asked questions and used both text based and online resources to find the answers to the questions they began their inquiry with.  They read and took notes.  They watched videos when they could and worked to understand.

Now the children are organizing their new information to create a display to teach you what they know.  The process is interesting to watch.  Some children answered their question by looking through images.  The learned new things and made some assumptions based on what they saw.  They know of things that could be taught, but don’t have all the information.  Now that an audience has become more obvious, they are now working to gather information to share. Some children found the answers to specific questions and have a collection of facts to share.  Still others asked more general questions that lead to more questions and so on.  They have thought quite a bit about their topic and have quite a bit of information to share.  When you come to tour the museum you’ll see these differences.

The Reason for the Seasons

We are learning about the seasons – what they are and how they happen.  Our goal is to be able to explain how Earth’s tilt, the rotation of the planet and it’s orbit fit together and bring us the seasons.  We are learning about solstices and equinoxes.  In addition to this the children are choosing a favorite season and will work to write an essay to convince others to change their minds.  We are having fun exploring these ideas.  Ask your child what season they have selected and what their top reasons are.  It is fun to see how they think about the year and what they notice and like to do.

Exploring Place Value

We are beginning a study of place value and are learning how to work with larger numbers up to the hundred thousands.  We will be learning how to use the standard algorithm for addition and subtraction.  We have learned the word “digit” and we have practiced reading numbers to identify the value of a digit in a variety of places.  We have played a game – Guess, Digit, Place and another called How Close to Zero as a way for the children to become more aware of the idea of place value.  I am guessing they would have a good time teaching you either of these games.  They are quick, but fun.

Bits and Pieces

• Our challenge this week was The Hidden Maze.  First we created a 6×6 square on the floor.  Then we had to discover the path through the maze – the goal was to work silently together to find which tiles were on the path and which were not.  That meant many had to take risks and make mistakes before the entire class could get through the maze.  It took cooperation and careful observation to complete the challenge.
• We began a new chapter read-aloud called Zorgamazoo.  Right now we’ve met the main characters – Katrina and Morty – and are just learning about how they come together and join for a quest.  See what your child has to say about the adventure.  One of the most interesting things about the book is that the whole thing rhymes.  We are enjoying it.