Hello Families!
How are you? I am well. The ideas flowing in and through our classroom are exciting. The way kids have been bringing in work done at home is how homework should be: Home Excitement! These kids can't wait to share and discuss what they did at home. Awesome.
This week we received a middle name spelling, a story, a poem and a costume character description. So cool! Bridget brought in her description of her horse character named Rosey which inspired a discussion about what types of information to share when describing them to set up a story. Here were some ideas brainstormed today:
It is great for friends to wear costumes any day of the year. (As long as they are comfortable and have extra clothes just in case they want to change if necessary) We have been taking this to a new level with these character descriptions. Bridget's example today got many others excited about coming up with their own character names and telling us the specific info that makes that character unique. I can't wait to see how each of their creativity comes out!
Last week we also spun the globe to find a spot to investigate. Joey's finger landed on Russia. If your child is interested, they might ask others what they know about this country. When investigating we are asking questions to gain more knowledge and understanding. Here are some examples of thing to look into:
What are special things about their culture there?
What is the geography of this land?
What language do they speak in this country?
What special foods do people eat?
Peyton's family has a giant nesting doll from Russia which she is writing about. She is using an atlas to look up more. Sometimes it is fun to check out books on topics of interest. If you child did, we'd love for you to bring them in!
We have also been thinking about key words a lot and how they can help us with many things. We did an activity on Monday where the friends were given a story starter and then they got into groups and came up with a possible next part to this story. Here is the story started we used:
"My dog jumped up and started barking..."
We used the concept of key words to help remind us of the story line.
I wonder, can your child tell you the stories again using these key word lists as reminders?
This work required compromise and collaboration skills which we are always trying to sharpen. The children reflected on this experience and added to our list about what works when teamwork is needed (you can find this on the wall by the sink in our classroom).
We have been using key words also for our journaling experiences. Today's topic was fish. The students brainstormed words they might want the spelling of before their work. This brainstorm of key words also helped others think of what they'd like to write about. As we put the words on the list, the students explained how they are relevant to the topic. This is something we are thinking about a lot in much of our writing: keeping things relevant and clear.
If you notice the first item, name, this is for the fact that we are trying to think about a name for our class baby fish. If you have ideas to share, please write them on the paper at the fish's table!
And finally, we are getting ready for a holiday the students are excited about. With everything we try to make it meaningful, relevant and personal to the students in our class. Holidays are no different. In this case the students talked about what it means to them. They didn't know too much about the history, but agreed they'd like to have some fun around this holiday. Some of the important elements they wanted to include were costumes, characters and being scary.
Planning involves a great deal of fabulous learning experiences, so the students formed groups that are going to get all the things we need done. One group will be writing sign ups for things we'd like to ask the parents for, help, food and books to read (scary and non scary). We will have this fun on Halloween day. All three day students are welcome to join us and also parents too! I am certain the students are going to do a great job coordinating the whole thing so that we all may have lots of fun together. Stay tuned for more info on this as they finish this up this week.
I am looking forward to our conferences that start tomorrow! Have a great night, Jennifer
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