It has been another terrific week. We celebrated Dot Day, we began Artist-Writers’ Workshop, we learned what makes quality blog comments and we read, wrote, explored science and solved math problems together too.

International Dot Day

Inspired by Peter Reynold’s book The Dot, Dot Day is a celebration of perseverance, determination and growing self-confidence. It is fun, because Vashti who feels she can’t draw at all, can make a dot. We made colorful dots, window dots, and framed dots. We made dot pins, dot magnets and many painted dots. We made puzzles dots and personal dots too. We made a class super dot and put them all in a class gallery.

In the book Vashti’s dots are put on display in a gallery and she is admired as a great artist. The boy who admires her work does not believe he can “draw a straight line with a ruler.” Vashti encourages him to make his mark and to see where it takes him. He does. We did too. If you are at the school some afternoon please come and tour our gallery in the hall outside our classroom. Together we make quite a mark. We had a fun day creating together.

 

 

 

3E Rules

Our social-emotional learning has centered on responsible decision making. We’ve been thinking about how we show respect for one another and how we are each contributing to the well-being of our class and our school. Last week we created a list of behaviors that would lead us to success. Our next step was to decide on rules that felt most important for us to follow.  After discussion, rearranging and writing, we decided on the rules we will use to guide our choices and our work together in 3E. Here they are:

• Be calm.
• Be kind.
• Try to solve little problems on your own.
• Stay quiet when you should.
• Be friendly and helpful.
• Stay focused.
• Stay in the classroom for directions and lessons.
• Be cooperative.
• Be safe.
• Use supplies wisely.
• Have fun.
• Now that our class rules are set, our next steps will be to set individual goals to increase independence and develop skills with self-management and self-direction

Reading Guidelines

Thank you everyone for helping us build a terrific reading museum today. We had some very special reading stacks on display. It was fun to see how everyone has grown and developed as a reader. It seemed that the class really enjoyed looking back and remembering great books shared as a family, the books that were first read and books that have been passed on to the next generation of readers.

Since we know we have all grown as readers and that we continue to grow as long as we continue to read, we established some guidelines for our reading time in the classroom. These are centered on the choices we make.   Some books are fun to look at and browse through. Some books are fun and quick to read. There are many different types of books – genre, they are called. It is good to try to read different types of books to stretch and grow our understanding.

We are working to grow into 40 minutes of reading a day. Our goal is that at least half of that time will be spent reading “just right” books. Other time might be spent with books like record books, almanacs, or comics.  If we are able to meet that goal we are wondering how many books we can read this year.

Understanding Multiplication and Arrays

We began the year learning about multiplication and it seems as though most of the children understand how it represents repeated grouping. As they select problems each day they are more independently able to understand the math story, represent it with an equation and solve it efficiently.

This week we learned about the commutative property. If one student has six plates with two cookies each and another student has two plates with six cookies each, they both have the same amount of cookies and that means if we know the multiples of 2 we also know some of the multiples of six. We are trying to help the children develop strategies for knowing these facts, just as they learned strategies for addition and subtraction facts last year.

 Bits and Pieces

• We are excited to be able to go to the Franklin Park Zoo next week. Look for a reminder list early in the week so we are prepared for all kinds of weather.
• Picture Day is September 22.
• We have a challenge scheduled on September 29. We wonder what Mr. Caron will help us learn and puzzle through.