Today started of with a great discussion in CC Meeting. Rusty's thinking question was how can we make our classroom/school a safe school zone in 2014? The kids came up with a great list of how tos. Then, I read them a powerful book called Each Kindness. It is a book about a new girl, Maya, that wears used hand me down clothes. Maya's new classmates ignore her and leave her out of their play. One classmate in particular won't even smile at Maya and they nickname her Never New. Then their teacher does a lesson on being kind and how kindness is like dropping a stone into water. It ripples out. The mean classmate, realizes instantly that she has been unkind to Maya. She really wants to become friends with Maya, but she is absent from school that day. She eagerly awaits Maya's return to school, but she never does. It turns out she moved away again. Now, the girl will never be able to be kind to Maya. She missed her chance. After the story, the kids were able to add even more powerful ways that we can help our classroom become a safe school zone for everyone to learn and grow in. Things like, never make fun of people clothing, always be nice to new students, never regret a time you could be nice or kind, and so many others. What a great lesson!
In Science, with Mrs. Auch, your child is learning about animals and all the things that have to do with it. They all selected an animal to research today. They now have to do some research at home. They have a sheet with all the expectations in their take home folders. On the back of that sheet, they wrote the grading rubric so they know how they will be scored. They need to get their own poster board to do this. (We do have some if they need it. They just need to ask). Also, the Science Fair is on March 27th. More details will be coming home about that soon.
In math, we worked on finding the greatest common factor. Kids have finding factors down. They even liked it so much, that a few of them asked for extra problems to do tonight for homework. Love it!
We studied constellations today in Lead 21. Each student was given a constellation. We went to the computer lab and did some research on the story behind them. Many kids wanted to just tell me fast facts. Many had to go back and try a different search to find the story. Most kids finished and are ready to present tomorrow, but some brought it home to research again tonight. The presentation tomorrow is about 20 seconds to one minute long. They will just stand up and share their constellation and its story.
We used the compasses again today to draw some circles for another snowology project. They are getting better and better on doing this and finding the radius on the tool. This will help a ton when we actually get to circles in our math books.
For homework tonight, kids have their Elvis Presley HR. We read it together in class. They just need to complete the back side. I am not sure every kid has listened to some of the songs listed in their HR reading. Maybe they could youtube one and listen to it??? If they (with you) do, write the name of the song you rock out to in the planner. :0) It is worth $10 tomorrow.
Kids have earned an ipod day in art. They may bring those with them to class tomorrow.
I again leave you with more of the article I am sharing.
