Thank you so much for helping your children prepare their news articles over the past few weeks. In this time we have learned about unmanned rockets to the moon, tracking concussions in youth football, cheetah/puppy friendships, tornadoes, student investigations into Oreo Double Stuff cookies, endangered bats, and so much more. Each of these articles provide an opportunity for us to consider and discuss topics that otherwise may never make it into our classroom. I share a news article most days myself. The articles I select often challenge the kids to consider two sides (perspectives) of an issue. While this work is in its infancy right now it will become a major part of our classroom over the course of the next two years.
I hope homework has been going smoothly at home these past few weeks. Next Monday the kids will bring in their reading logs and math packets. When they enter the classroom there will be morning procedures listed on the board (as there are every morning). These instructions will ask them to turn their homework into the tray by the sink (pictured above). This is the tray where all homework goes. While they have a week to complete most assignments, they are welcome to turn them in at any time. Underneath the homework tray is another tray holding extra copies of everything I have handed out to them. Should they ever lose something this is where they get another copy. No need to even let me know because the solution is there waiting for them.
Learning to become independent and take responsibility for their work will be a classroom focus over the next few months. When something is forgotten (and doesn't that happen to us all from time to time?) you'll see a blue "Missing Homework" form come home. The purpose of this form is to let you know about the missed or incomplete assignment in hopes you'll talk about it at home and help your child think about strategies for the future. There are plenty of classrooms across this state and country where kids are belittled, punished, and shamed for missing and incomplete assignments to the extent they come to school terrified of admitting what has happened. Please know the work we're doing is to SUPPORT them into developing home strategies for getting their work complete and bringing it back in. It's easier to grow when you feel you're being successful or you're learning from your miscues.
There is a spot on the form that lists how many assignments have been late this year. This is to help us identify patterns (vs occasional mishaps). If one of the kids is missing assignments consistently that might mean action needs to be taken. One possible action is for me to begin checking their backpack each afternoon to make sure they are bringing home everything they need. Another might be to establish a morning or evening routine of checking the blog and the backpack to make sure everything is set for the next day. My hope is that by the end of third grade you'll all find that you're kids are set to take on this work for themselves.
Last week I spoke to two structures of our morning routine: News and Journals. Another component of our Morning Meeting is "Class History." Each day one of the kids is given the responsibility to being the class historian. This job rotates so that everyone gets a turn every four weeks or so. The class historian carries the "Spy Book" all day and takes notes on the things we are doing together in class. That night (or the next morning) they take these notes and publish an official page for our Class History binder. We begin each Morning Meeting by listening to the historical account of what we did the day before. Above is an image of one of our Class History pages. In addition to providing us an opportunity to later discuss how history is written (especially in terms of how decisions are made about what is important and who has the power to decide this) Class History allows us to model for each other what a published piece of writing should sound like in terms of being clear, using details, etc.
Some things we have been working on this week are:
* Listening in on different adults read aloud and noticing how they move through the text. Our big question is: What does reading sound like?
* Using shapes to introduce some of the work we'll be doing around computation in the coming weeks.
* Sorting animals by various observable attributes.
* Discovering rules of capitalization.
That's it for this week. I look forward to seeing many of you next week at Opening Picnic!
Have a great weekend,
Chris
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