Whew! What a wonderful and challenging week we had in 3B. The students rose to meet each challenge this week with enthusiasm. I am so proud of how hard they worked and how much they accomplished. From math problems that pushed them to think about and apply many math concepts at once, to brainstorming (and really pushing our brains to think up a storm!) ideas for our stories about kindness, the students have been challenged to reflect on their work and complete their tasks with pride. Not only have they been thinking critically about their school work, but we had the opportunity this week to have some great discussions about the world and how different perspectives can create different sides to the same story. We thought about worldly matters as they relate to what we have learned about the colonization of america, and were able to express compassion for the difficulties our world faces, as well as gratitude that we live in such a wonderful place that is free of war. In our discussions we also learned a bit about currency exchange (thanks to Sonia, who brought Russian Rubles to share), and how exchange rates are influenced by political interactions. I was impressed with how much knowledge the students had about current affairs around the world, and touched by their ability to share openly and honestly in a caring environment. I am so grateful to witness these discussions, and happy to have the opportunity to facilitate learning based on the interests of the students! It has been a great week of "teachable" moments =)
Ava sharing her gemstones with the class.
Story board making! Special thanks to Ava's mom Kim who shared her story boards with us as inspiration! The students all started brainstorming and mapping out story ideas, but we had some serious writer's block (or creativity block) and a lot of stories looked a lot like the silly story Ms. Howell made up as an example. After a discussion about how even famous authors get writer's block (we had a great story about Kate Dicamillo who says not one "ding danging thing" will happen unless you show up and write, and that you never know when inspiration will strike!), some examples of Ms. Howell's brainstorming that led to her writing "Bluealicious", and peer conversations where we gave comments and suggestions to one another, the students reflected on their first draft and many decided to start over! Their new ideas are inspired and exciting, and they are passionate about the story lines, and I am so proud of them for their self-evaluation. I look forward to the next few months of writing and refining the stories with them until we have a class full of books!
Math centers this week had the students learning about probability when flipping a coin and rolling a dice. We were able to discover a lot of patterns in our explorations, as well as practice our addition and multiplication skills. The students worked very well in groups and were able to participate in our discussions using more and more "math talk" each time. They also worked a lot with scale and measuring this week, and I am impressed with how well they are understanding such a difficult concept. From measuring animals and drawing them to scale on paper, to measuring classroom objects, to measuring the entire lower school, they have been hard at work! Multiplication, division, fractions, decimals, centimeters, millimeters, units of measure, and knowing the difference between area and perimeter are challenging concepts individually, and the students have been developing an understanding of them as well as working hard to know when to apply each concept. I admit that our brains have all been thinking hard this week!
Morning activity to build trust, communication and practice describing in detail: students had to guide one another around the room pretending they were a photographer and a camera. The photographer would "snap a photo" and the student camera would open their eyes for a second then close them again and describe everything they saw in that second. Then they switched places!
Peer sharing: discussing our story maps and story boards and giving each other constructive feedback.