It is unbelievable that we’ve already completed our first week of 2017. Where does the time go? I hope your vacation gave you time to celebrate and enjoy, rest and relax, and laugh and play. We are into the major long learning time of the school year. We’ve set our goals and have much to accomplish. 🙂

We are glad to welcome Megan Whitten into our classroom for a few weeks. She is spending time with us as part of her studies at Endicott College. Some of you may know her from Summer Rec. It’s fun to have her back – the last time we shared a classroom together was twelve years ago.

Celebrating Accomplishment 1 – Enjoyment and Learning

On Tuesday we were able to celebrate behavior that supports learning for everyone in 3E.   We discovered that it takes between 40 and 45 pompoms to reach our goal. This could be done accomplished in 2 weeks if we all choose to be self-aware and to monitor our own behavior. We’ll see if that matters. It took us two months to achieve our goal the first time. Our class needs the opportunity to learn how to be leaders and how to be responsible members of a community. Those getting checks need to learn strategies for helping their classmates, without seeming bossy. The more great models we have, the easier it will be for everyone to succeed. Its hard to listen to someone shout out, “Be quiet” when just moments before they were giggling and talking at the rug during the lesson.

Mostly the children are unaware of their bad habits. There are some children who sit down at a table and begin to talk, or walk into line and begin chatting. It is automatic and persistent. They forget that their focus should be on the assignment. Most kids need to become more aware that they are talking when they should be listening. They need to be focused on the task at hand and save conversation for later. They need to learn not to respond to others talking. They need reminders of what the inside voice volume should be and when it is time to be funny and goofing around. We’re improving – our goal is to be a class that is able to follow the rules it set for itself at the beginning of the year. We are trying to focus on learning, to be respectful, quiet, calm and kind.

Practicing Mindfulness

Mrs. Mariotti has been coming in once a month all year to teach us about mindfulness and about being aware of the moment. She’s been helping us think about how well we are doing with meeting our classroom goals and expectations. How are we showing respect? How are we demonstrating focus? She has asked us to become social detectives and use the tools we have to become more aware of behaving in ways that are expected. She asked us to use our eyes, ears and brains to become more aware of ways to behave in expected ways. Over the course of the next few sessions we are going to learn strategies we can all use to build a more positive and successful learning environment for us all.

Using Money to Practice Multiplying by 5’s and 10’s

While still working on time and grouping minutes, we’ve also begun to learn some about money. We’ve been identifying coins and finding totals. If you’ve got a change stash – counting and totaling money would be a great thing to do. Strategies of grouping like coins and finding the totals of each group and then adding or starting with the largest value as an organizing strategy.

The problems we’ve been solving are asking the children to think of value and coin numbers. They’re asking them to make change. That is tricky too. If there are any opportunities for your child to practice making change – or figuring out what the change will be when shopping those would add lots to his or her understanding as well. Thank you.

Bits and Pieces –

• We’ve completed our second set of cursive letters – the kite string set. We now know the lower case forms for a, c, d, g., i, j, o, p, q, r, s, t, and w. Cursive is fun to learn and do. Our next set of letters will be the loop group.
• Mrs. Duffy would like to start a game club for our class. We are wondering if there are interested families and students. And if there are, when would be the best time to hold it – before or after school. Once we know that we’ll set a day and time and families can sign up. Please complete the orange form and send it back on Monday so we can make the plan and begin. Thank you.
• We are continuing our exploration of global geography. We hope to have explored all of the continents and made our country selections by the end of next week so we can begin our next research project.
• We are reading our second Humphrey book, Secrets According to Humphrey and will begin some Humphrey book clubs in the next week as well.

I thought I’d share a picture of my vacation reading buddy.  This is our grandson, James.  So fun!