Newsletter: January 22, 2016

Hey Everyone,

Despite the cold weather (and mythical "January Blues") we've had a wonderful week. In reading workshop the kids have been reading and discussing books in each of their book clubs. Book clubs are a great structure in that it sets aside time for the kids to get together in small groups and talk about our questions, predictions, connections, noticings, and so on. The books they read were ones they had chosen for themselves. It was our first go at doing this together and was successful in many ways. My instructional focus during this time was to (1) help the kids be intentional in thinking about their reading so they can better understand the text and (2) support them into the practice of having a discussion in which we all build on one another's ideas (rather than simply taking turns sharing loosely related thoughts. Each of these skills take time to develop but are very, very important. The first, comprehension strategies, supports them into becoming strong readers. The second, building rich discussions, helps us establish a classroom where we truly co-construct knowledge with one another and even challenge ideas that don't sound right to us.

One of the texts we used during study was a news article about the Powerball lottery.
We used this to practice keeping track of our thinking while reading as well as
to practice building a discussion around the things we noticed.

Here you can see the notes being collected while reading. The purpose of this is to
leave "footprints in the snow" to help us find our way back through our
thoughts from a given section.

Another nice element of have a daily book chat with their groups is that it
helps them focus their reading during independent reading time. They know
they'll be talking about the text and they want to be ready. Thus, they
'are reading with intention. 

In science this week the kids worked in small groups to find information about various forms of severe weather. To accomplish this, we borrowed a class set of Chrome Books from the third grade classroom next door. Our MAT, Mr. Smith, took the lead on this and helped the kids locate information on the internet as well as collect a handful of facts. Today each group shared some of their facts with one another and began creating posters to display their learning and from which to teach the rest of us. We'll continue this work next week. 

Mr. Smith is working with the kids to think about ways they might solve conflicts (technological
or interpersonal) within their small groups when working on this group project.

In Explorations the kids have been writing things in our class journals to share out during Morning Meeting. We've discussed questions such as "Why can teachers wear shorts in some schools but not others?", "Why do the middle schoolers go to school at different times than we do?", and "What is the largest land animal still alive?". Others spend Exploration time playing Chess or Othello. There has also been a small group working on a really difficult puzzle (see below) from time to time. They finally finished it this week. They had been pulling it out once or twice a week for some time. I love puzzles because they help kids learn to focus on small details as well as to stick with a long-term project that does not offer instant-gratification. I was really proud to see them complete this.

Puzzle depicting a scramble of colorful paper clips.

That's it for this week. I hope you all stay warm this weekend. Maybe the kids will get to see some snow on Saturday. I know they'd be excited!