Newsletter: Sunday, April 10th

Hey Everyone!

It was nice to get back to school this past week after a week away. We are now entering our final nine weeks of the school year. I'm sure these weeks will pass quite quickly with so much going on - MATs final day, Splash Day, Closing Picnic, Graduation, etc. April and (especially) May are always a busy time of year.

I've said this before (and I'm sure I'll repeat myself at the end of the school year) but I want you all to know how much I love working with your kids day-in and day-out. In many ways this has been an incredibly tiring year for me as I've worked to finish up my PhD coursework (only two more weeks left!), to collect, organize, and reflect on my dissertation research, to share the work we do together each day with other teachers through articles and presentations, to run my kids all around town for school events, sporting events, sleepovers, and playdates (not that they call them "playdates" any more), and to stay on top of and be prepared for everything that goes on here at CFI. But within this busy year there has never been a single day when I haven't been incredibly thankful for these kids - our shared laughs, hugs, and all those "a-ha" moments when suddenly something new makes sense. Though there are bound to be moments from time-to-time when things don't go as smoothly as we might all hope, there is no better place to be than together.

I'm a strong believer that school-based learning is rooted in relationships - the kids relationship to learning (and not merely to finishing or achieving), their relationship to one another, and their relationship to me. Building and maintaining these relationships are at the heart of everything we do. These are what I will miss eight weeks from now when they head off for summer. So we're primed to make the most of these final weeks together. Here's what we are up to right now...

Reading

After a long and rigorous study of both non-fiction texts and inferencing before Spring Break we have spent this past week easing back in to our reading workshop by enjoying some wonderful books and thinking about the sorts of things we will read over the remainder of the year. I noticed some of the kids' energy for reading seemed to be waning a bit as we crawled into the break. To address this we spent this week establishing a new structure in which we can recommend great books to one another. We have also been reconnecting to work Mr. Smith did with the kids before break as we not only share our thinking about our reading but go back into the text and provide samples from the text that supports our thinking. in doing this we are moving from saying "I think..." to " I think...because in the book..." We'll continue to do this over the coming weeks as we dig deeper into the process of creating meaning from our texts.

Writing

The kids  spent this past week preparing for Gathering as well as  publishing three opinion pieces they worked on before the break. In their opinion pieces they were learning to provide supporting information that not only supports their opinion but helps the reader really understand their thinking. For some, this was very hard. However, Mr. Smith and I worked closely beside them and tailored our daily teaching around the challenges they were facing as writers to ensure our instruction met their independent and collective needs. This is one big difference between the curriculum and instruction that takes place at CFI and so many other places. There are far too many classrooms out there where the curriculum is determined before the kids even walk in the door in August. Some keep up, others do not. I'm proud that one of our philosophical beliefs here is that our classrooms should be child-centered, not teacher-centered or even curriculum-centered. All of this gets negotiated from week-to-week, day-to-day, and moment-to-moment.

Math

In math this week Mr. Smith has been building toward a basic understanding of multiplication as the kids have explored repeated addition. This is always a big hit in both second and third grade. The kids are so interested in multiplication. In some ways, it's like cursive in that everyone feels older or bigger for knowing it. Mr. Smith has introduced some fun games and challenging problems for the kids to work through.

Science

Mr. Smith has also been taking responsibility for our science explorations. This week the kids began inquiring into magnets. They have played around with them, experimented  to find out what sorts of materials they are and are not attracted to, and carefully recorded their thinking and noticings in their science journals. Next week they will begin developing experiments to test if magnetism is effected by the size or shape of the magnet. They'll also learn to magnetize a nail and then test for a correlation between the process of magnetizing the nail and strength of the magnetic force. Lots of exploration!

We also presented our Expert Projects to one another. I'll leave you with pics of the kids presenting. Unfortunately, I was unable to capture photos of a couple of the kids' presentations because I was in a meeting while Mr. Smith facilitated those.

Have a great week!