Newsletter: November 2

Dear Families,

I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween with your kids. They came back very excited...and surprisingly not all that tired.

Read on to find out about some of our recent studies...

A few weeks ago, on Columbus Day, we watched a video about Christopher Columbus that
was part of the American Hero Classics series. While watching, the kids listed adjectives
to describe Columbus, drawing from the facts they were hearing on the video.

The following day I shared two new resources: on a picture book and the other an excerpt from
a history book written for children. The perspective on Columbus was much different in these two
texts in relation to what we had learned the day before on the video.

All three resources shared facts, but chose very carefully which facts they felt
were most important for students to learn. The video framed Christopher Columbus
as a noble, heroic man. The two texts framed him as greedy and merciless.

Again, the kids generated adjectives to describe Columbus based on what they were hearing
Afterward, we discussed why the resources would share such different facts. We also explored
the role of a historian in shaping what we know or how we feel about people  and events
in history.

Mrs. Schumacher and I broke the kids into two groups and worked with them to
create timelines including all we knew about Columbus from the video and two books. 

We then asked them to play the role of historian and, limited by space, choose just
five essential facts they felt other students should know about his life, exploration, and
treatment of the Native tribes he encountered. The kids were challenged to make hard
decisions.

The kids then used the facts they selected from the collaborative timeline to
create five-frame comics teaching others about Christopher Columbus.

Most, at this point, felt Columbus was not that heroic of a man based on
the horrible things he had done to the Native people he encountered. However,
most of their comics left these facts out. They tended to default back to the popular
story many of us learned as children. 

My goal was not to have any of them believe one thing or another about
Columbus. Rather, my goal was to help them see that historians are always
choosing what to share and how to share it and this process always works
to exclude certain perspectives and lived experiences. The important part
of learning history is to ask key questions: What else do I need to know to understand this?,
Whose voice/perspective is being privileged in the telling of the story?, Whose voice/perspective
is being left out? It was a lot of fun to play around with such ideas and the kids did
a wonderful job.

We used boxes of raisins to think about estimation and to think about the range of our estimates. Then we opened our box and made a new estimation just by looking inside. 

After making estimations, we were able to actually count our raisins and each student grouped their raisins so that they could easily count the raisins in the box. By grouping their raisins, we were able to see how groups of things can turn into repeated addition and then multiplication. 

This student grouped their raisins in fives and ended up with a left over of 3 raisins. 

We wanted to see how everyone decided to group their raisins so we created a chart. By listing the different groupings, it allowed for students to discover how one number could be grouped different ways. 

We've continued our weekly reading to our 1st grade reading buddies.

This is a great time to work at not only supporting young readers but working to
build stronger reading fluency as we read aloud to an interested audience.

To support this growth, the kids have been working to rehearse and perform various
pieces for our class as well. Some of these have been simple little poems.

A few poems even required a bit of acting.

Other pieces they've performed have been full scripts developed from popular
stories and books. Final presentations of these pieces are taking place on Wednesday
and Thursday. We might hold on to one or two of them for our next Gathering (in January, I believe).

In studying Native Americans in Social Studies, we split into three different groups to study the three major tribes in South Carolina: Cherokee, Catawba, and Yamassee. All of the groups worked together to gather facts, organize the information and create illustrations. 

The groups gathered all of the facts they discovered about their tribes and worked together to create a poster to share with the class. 

During their presentations, they all shared facts and information that they learned while researching and collaborating with other group members. 

The group that researched the Yamassee tribe found facts on migration, food, shelter and various other facts. 

The group that researched the Catawba tribe found facts of about their shelter, tools and weapons they used, food they ate, the language they spoke and other fun facts. 

The group that researched the Cherokee tribe found information abut shelter, travel, food, and other fun facts.