Newsletter: November 11

Dear Families,

This past week we spent time talking a bit about communities. After reading a book together I asked the kids to tell me how they would define a community. After a number of people threw around some ideas we all came to the idea that a community is a group of people who have something in common and who get together in some way. Some communities we belong to include: our neighborhood, school, sports, church, hobbies, our classroom, and so on.

We listed all the people we could think of from our school community and then began to categorize them - office staff, principal, special area teachers, etc. Lastly, I asked everyone to tell me which group has the most power in regards to making decisions for the rest of the community. This discussion was interesting because at first nearly everyone thought it HAD to be the principal because she is in charge of the school. However, someone threw out the idea that the parents have the most power because they decide whether or not to send their kids to our school in the first place. After discussing this a couple of people changed their minds. It was a great example of the power of multiple perspectives within a conversation. Everyone was then given the task of rank ordering which five groups would be at the top in terms of power and which group might be at the bottom. While walking around the room listening in to the conversations I overheard someone say, "We have five groups who make most the decisions and five that aren't as important." As much as I wanted to address this comment I chose to file it away so I can access it later as part of a study of power, responsibility, and equity in our community.

In math we have been hard at work with word problems. The first part of our strategy for solving these problems has been to envision the story in your head the same as you would something you are reading from a book. If you can see it happening in your head you will most likely be able to solve it because understanding what is happening in the story is absolutely crucial. From here the kids began drawing pictures of what they saw to represent what has happened. Finally, we bridged this work into writing the traditional equation, or number sentence (4 cards + 11 cards = 15 cards). During this study the kids solved a good amount of problems as well as created some of their own to share with others. We are now turning our attention to a study of geometry. This week we will be exploring both polygons and three dimensional shapes.

In writing we have been working to create timelines to help organize and draw out more details in our memoir writing.

At Curriculum Night on Thursday (6:15pm) we will share with you the work we are doing with memoir writing. You'll be engaged in an activity the kids often do in the classroom (studying a published text for evidence of craft moves we could do in our own writing) as well as listening to the kids share a little piece of their current drafts. Of course, we'll sing a few songs as well.

If you plan to send in pledge money for the Walk-a-Thon but have not collected it all just yet please let me know. I plan to send the money in later this week but am more than happy to wait just a bit longer if anyone needs extra time. Just let me know!

Thanks,
Chris