Newsletter: September 3rd

Dear Parents,

I hope you all had a nice relaxing (or adventurous) Labor Day weekend. My family headed up to Damascus, Virginia, a small mountain town with only 800 people and no traffic lights or fast food restaurants. What it does have is lots of people coming through to bike, hike, and sit creek side with friends and family. Oh, and much cooler temperatures than we've grown accustomed to in the midlands. We biked the Virginia Creeper Trail, ate at a few small local restaurants, and spent time hanging out together. The fact there was no cell or internet signal really helped to make this extra time together become a reality. Unfortunately I also got really, really sick over the weekend. I'm feeling better this week but still have a gravelly voice and a lingering cough. The kids have been a great help. What an awesome bunch of kids these are!

This week we've been focusing on non-fiction texts during reading workshop. Today we read and discussed an article Mr. Foote shared with us last week. It's about an artist, Damien Hirst, who paid a fisherman to catch a tiger shark, mounted it in a case of fluid that preserved the body, and displayed it in an art museum as a piece challenging us to consider the line between life and death. The article explained many people question whether this is really art since Hirst did not create it. The author called attention to another famous artist who pulled urinals off the wall, signed them, and put them on display in art galleries. The question posed was "What is art?" However, after using this article to talk about finding important information what the kids really wanted to talk about was how angry they were about the shark being killed for an art installation. Funny. I never saw this coming. But I should have known because kids almost universally come to the defense of animals (in real life or in books). This just goes to show how different readers can pull different meanings from the same text. Ask your child about it.

Speaking of reading, the kids met their USC Tall Teachers for the first time this week. These are undergraduate students who are working with Ms. Whitecotton and I to learn about literacy assessment. They will visit our classroom each Tuesday from 1:45 - 2:45 to observe our reading workshop and to work one-on-one with the kids to practice the assessment techniques they are learning about. They will use the assessment data they collect to formulate and teach lessons addressing the individual needs of each of the kids. The kids will work with the same Tall Teacher all semester. Here are some pics of their first meeting. The Tall Teachers spent time chatting with the kids, sharing a book, and listening to the kids read and share their work.

We look forward to our work together with them!

Tomorrow we will be launching our study of multiplication. We're also continuing our work with geography and maps, though this has taken a bit of a backseat the past two days as we think about what we might share at Gathering on Friday. Speaking of Gathering, we hope to see you there. We'll begin at 2:20 and should run up to 2:35 or so. We'll be talking about our summer reading, some data we extracted from these projects, and our study of composting. The kids are poised to share their learning.

Lastly, look for Scholastic book order forms to come home next week. This will be a great opportunity to find some books to fuel early year reading as well as support our classroom.

See you soon,
Chris