We’ve had a week of celebrations – the 100^th day of School, Valentines Day and the completion of The Global Kind Project – and projects. We shared kindness with three classes this week and made our Valentines bags. That on top of reading books by Trudy Ludwig and Patricia Polacco, exploring ideas of peace, writing, researching, reading and solving problems each day. It’s been a full week.

Global Kind Project Officially Completed…

We’ve completed the Global Kind Project and achieved our goals. We reached 100 acts of kindness in a month’s time. We probably performed more than that, but, recognized and recorded that many. We also achieved our second goal. We recognized every student in the school by making something just for them. That felt great!

We made name pencils for preschool and finger puppets for kindergarten. Thank you to Annika’s mom for helping us create the finger puppets we were able to share with kindergarten. We created 100^th Day pencils for first grade and left kind messages for 2^nd graders. We made monster pencils for 3^rd grade and cupcake pencils for 4^th grade. We shared some of those with the office too. We made super hero bookmarks for 5^th grade and duct tape books marks for 6^th. We made monster pencils for 7^th grade and locker magnets for 8^th grade. And finally, we created bookmarks for anyone to take from the library.

The month long celebration is over, but we ‘d like to continue to find ways to pay it forward and make people smile. We explored the ideas of kindness, empathy, gratitude, and peace. We’re learning to remain present and appreciate the wonders around us.

Creating Peace and Sharing Friendship

We’ve been exploring Peace – what it means to us, and how it shows in the world. We’ve been thinking about how “peace” looks and sounds, feels and smells. We’ve read a number of books and poems about peace and that inspired us to create our own images of peace and to learn how the word peace is said and written in each of our countries. We’ll soon have those images out in the hall for all to see.

Thanks to everyone for helping us celebrate friendship on Valentines Day. It felt good to take some time stop and realize that we enjoy being together. We like working together to do things and we like learning together as well.

Country Convention – our research, you’re reading

We named our museum this week. And we’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about ways to meet both the research and the writing expectations. We are attempting to do more than share a collection of listed facts. We are attempting to create cohesive paragraphs about each of the wonders. We’re thinking more about how our words inform and create mental images for our readers.

We are looking forward to sharing our work with families on Thursday, March 15. Our Country Convention will be open in the afternoon from 2:15 to 2:45 and later in the evening from 5:30 to 6:30.

Understanding More About Patterns in Math

We’ve continued to practice using the standard algorithm with both addition and subtraction in math. We’ve built models using base ten blocks so we can actually see the amounts traded to match the way we record this process on paper. Many of the children are feeling as if they’ve accomplished something as they come to understand this process. We’ve worked with zeros and regrouping and trading many times. It seems as though the class as a strong enough understanding of place value to keep track of the process even with amounts in the millions.

We’ve also explored the concepts of perimeter and area. While some of the children rely on counting, most of them realize that perimeter is the outside and is found by adding, while area is the inside and is found my multiplying.

Bits and Pieces:

• Talk to your child about our current chapter read-aloud, Tiger Boy, and what s/he is beginning to realize about living in a place where money and resources of scarce.
• Find out how the class is celebrating the Olympics in gym class with Mr. Caron and Mrs. Yeaton.
• We could use your help in reminding your child how you hope they act at school. There is not a day that goes by that I am not talked over during instruction. There is rarely a group meeting or lesson not interrupted by chatting. While we are doing a lot, the class continues to consume a huge amount of time talking. I fear many of the children will not meet work expectations. Some will not meet them because they are unfocused. Some will not meet them because they have chat throughout instruction and are unaware of the expectation. They totally miss the lesson. Projects, play dates, video games or squishies are more important to them than learning. Chatting during instruction is a chronic problem for over a third of the class. Their chatting is negatively impact by reducing their time to practice and learn. Thank you for your help with this.