Newsletter: Wednesday, February 21st

Dear Families,

I hope you're all enjoying the fabulous weather. Today one of the kids asked why we're already seeing  so many plants and insects emerging when it's still winter. They came to the conclusion they might be fooled by the warm weather. I love that they're always observing, questioning, and hypothesizing!

Here are a few updates on our most recent work and experiences...

From Chris

We loved seeing the written conversations and charts come back in from the books you read alongside your children. The kids did a wonderful job when they returned of sharing what you all were thinking, wondering, and feeling. They grouped up with others who had taken the same book home to have a book club chat around the book, its content, and its meaning. If you haven't checked out our CFI Fb page be sure to do so because I posted something on there praising the kids for their brilliance and kindness.

Our study of the idea of a singular "normal" grew out of past experiences I have had where students sometimes have said "ewwww", "gross", "that's weird", and other similarly negative statements when confronted with photographs or information about other cultures. My hope in this study is to help the kids see that such ways of viewing those who are different from us is harmful and, at times, can become oppressive. 

We are now moving into country/culture studies in social studies. As a class we are now studying China. This whole class inquiry is allowing us to explore non-fiction texts, visual and textual features, and specific strategies for comprehension and research. In the next few days the kids will be asked to choose a country they would like to research independently. This research will become our second, and most substantial, expert project of the year. 

Lastly, here are some fun photos from our Friendship Day celebration. The kids did a marvelous job of creating personal letters of appreciate for their secret pal and then presenting them to the class. We were also able to share appreciations we had made for Dr. Mueller. She was very touched.

From Carla

The student led conferences went extremely well. Each of the students had an opportunity to meet with their parent or guardian and discuss what they had learned since the start of the school year. This included how they had grown as writers, mathematicians, scientists and social scientists. The students shared artifacts from their journals to help guide the discussion. These included their half-size me, writing pieces, normalcy charts and animal classifications. Each of these artifacts show the students’ growth from the beginning of the school year. The students enjoyed sharing their progress and it was clear the parents enjoyed hearing about all the hard work they do each day in their classroom communities. We have a few make-ups to get to this week and then we (the teachers) will begin to turn our attention to the upcoming narrative progress reports.

In mathematics, the students have been working to understand repeated addition which will help to explain multiplication. To assist in this process, I shared a book of math riddles written by Greg Tang, a respected mathematician. After reading each riddle, I show them the accompanying picture. The students then developed an equation using the repeated addition form. The lesson was a resounding success. Not only did the riddles keep their attention and help in understanding groups and sets, but they enjoyed it so much that they asked we make it a daily routine.