Newsletter: Wednesday, September 28

CNN Student News is a program developed for Middle and High School Students.
For this reason, we do not watch the entire program. Rather, we watch a few segments
each week that I have previewed ahead of time and determined to be both developmentally
appropriate and of interest to the kids. Topics have included: the presidential election,
Louisiana flooding, effects of pollution on our brains, bike helmets made of paper,
competing ideas as to how many refugees should be allowed into the US, the earthquake
in Italy, the relationship between having a pet and happiness, and a rise in young people
seeking blue collar jobs rather than attending college.

Many of the kids have been excited about the upcoming presidential election. A few times each week we watch CNN Student News together and discuss some of the stories we hear about. Many of the recent stories have been about the election -- from updates on survey data to explanations of how the electoral college works. We've been working to NOT act as though this is a football game between Clemson and USC with the cheering and booing of candidate names. Rather, we're learning that elections are about beliefs and ideas and credibility.

Thank you all so much for spending time with the kids these past few nights talking about an issue that is important to you as well as what each of the candidates have to say about that issue. We used them in class today to begin a chart showing the key beliefs and ideas of each of the candidates. I deliberately chose to include the Libertarian and Green party to challenge the idea there can only be two schools of thought in regards to how citizens should be governed. It'll be fun to continue filling this chart out as the weeks pass.

Soon we'll watch a few commercials from each of the candidates. This will provide us an opportunity to critically read the information we're receiving as we work to find out what messages these candidates are conveying in an effort to gain support and votes. I'll access the commercials that have garnered the most YouTube hits for this engagement.

In a few weeks the kids will interview you again to find out how you generally go about making your decision each election cycle. This will not be a discussion about specific candidates...but rather an opportunity for the kids to learn about civic responsibility in regards to following issues that are important to us and voting accordingly.

In other parts of our day we have been...

...launching Book Clubs in reading. Small groups of kids are reading the same book and getting together daily to discuss their understandings, questions, predictions, connections, etc. This is always a popular structure as it creates space for lots of talking. We're also set to begin a small inquiry into parts of speech.

 ...learning to write comics that make sense. You saw a good bit of this at Gathering last week. We've been slowed down the past few days by some district testing (practice testing, really) but are set to begin again on Thursday. The kids will spend two weeks creating "graphic" short stories while paying very careful attention to the use of dialogue to advance the story.

...delving deeper into multiplication. By the end of next week we will have worked our way through each of the times tables through 10 as well as worked through a number of conceptual engagements designed to support the kids into better understanding how multiplication works.

...learning about the continents of the world as well as some of the states within the US (focusing on those we have traveled to during family vacations). Tomorrow we'll begin learning about the regions of South Carolina.