It has been a while since you got a detailed update/personal reflection about the goings on in room 7! If you have not checked us out on Twitter...you should! You can get more frequent quick peeks of our activities. These can be used to spark conversations about your child's day.
The New Year has brought increased stamina and dedication to the class rules of WORK HARD and BE NICE. The children continue to push themselves and each other to do their best! Honestly, it is really hard to do all the time. We get tired, sometimes we are hungry and the stomach bug has made it really hard to persevere. But the students continue to do it! I hope your child shared, with you, the Shel Silverstein poem Tired they brought home. We had a few laughs over it:)
In reading and writing, we worked hard on writing persuasive letters about the books we read. We are experts at using I think..., for example..., and another reason....Our final persuasive piece was based on a favorite Tomie dePaola book. He is an amazing author! We enjoyed watching videos of him reading his books to us and he also taught us how to draw Strega Nona and a herd of sheep. We also learned a lot about his life during the class read aloud of 26 Fairmount Avenue. This is part of an autobiographical series he wrote. You may want to read with or encourage your child to read more of his life stories.
Now that we have wrapped that up, we are heading into writing like scientists. We will be exploring fiction and nonfiction texts about engineering, architecture and building bridges as we write lab reports using the scientific and engineering processes. Ultimately we will build, test and rebuild (improve) bridges to make the most stable bridge we can based on our design ideas. Again, we have many books to read to get ideas and learn about this process. I think I took a total of 42 books from the Minuteman Library Network! To support this work, keep an eye on bridges around town and in your travels, and ask "what do you notice?" I predict, there will be many students considering engineering and design professions after this exploration.
In Science, we wrapped up our study of Pebbles, Sand and Silt. Have you noticed students talking about rocks, mountains or landforms as you are out and about in nature? Are they asking questions or giving you information about rock walls, buildings, or concrete? If not, be sure to ask them when you notice these things that have been made by people and from earth materials.
In regards to Social Studies, the symbolic butterflies we sent to Mexico via Journey North have arrived! See the pictures above. One is of the butterfly we sent. The other is of students in Mexico holding it! We look forward to receiving symbolic butterflies back in the spring when we will be raising real butterflies in our classroom. Also, our postcards (see photo below) returned from Antarctica! I hope your child was able to share this exciting moment with you. If not, be sure to ask them about the special stamp that our science educator friend Jean Pennycook added to their cards. Currently, we have explored North America and Antarctic. We will continue our exploration around the world so that we ultimately explore each of the seven continents by the end of the year!
Another important Social Studies concept is democracy. We have been participating in activities to support our school wide Constitutional Convention. Mr. Hanna has been facilitating this work and we recently wrote essays and speeches about what makes a good leader. We voted and Anthony was elected as our classroom representative for this work. As a class we will prepare a poster about our ideas for good school rules. Anthony will bring these to the convention. This has been a great process with many connections to the current Presidential race!
In math, we continue to solve problems based on our increasing knowledge of the base ten number system. This means we are internalizing basic math facts to ten. Also, we are able to use our knowledge of multiples of ten to break apart numbers into groups of ten and ones. This is essential to our understanding of place value as numbers increase into the hundreds, thousands and beyond! Please continue to present your child with problem solving scenarios in your everyday activities.
I look forward to a Spring full of new life and exploration!