Newsletter: May 9th

Hey Everyone,

Just in case you haven't heard, we have started to learn to write in cursive. The kids were SO excited to begin. Cursive is nice because it offers everyone an opportunity to start from scratch with their handwriting. This is particularly helpful to those who still confuse tall and short letters and capital and lower case letters in print. With cursive we cal all work slowly and carefully to write with greater care. Whether or not cursive should be taught (and in what grade(s) it should be taught) is an argument that takes place quite often. I understand all perspectives on this. That said, I do appreciate the opportunity it offers to revisit the conventions of legible handwriting. And the kids often love it. They see it as "grown up" writing and are eager to join the club.

We have workbooks to guide our learning. Most days we focus on two letters before moving on to our independent writing time. We've begun with the letters beginning with an under-curve stroke (letters i, t, e, l, u, w, etc). So far the letters have been pretty easy. Soon enough, though, we'll move on to the more challenging ones such as h, f, and k (just to name a few). We'll work at this again at the beginning of next year.

In science we've continued our inquiry into magnets. The kids have been working to discover which materials magnets stick to and which they do not. At first, it seems as though magnets stick to metal. But with more exploration and reflection they soon learn not all metals work.

This sort of work is a great opportunity to learn the value of creating charts to organize our data. This type of organization allows us to more quickly and easily find patterns and develop further questions to explore.

Over the past week or two the kids have come to learn that magnets are attracted to metals containing iron. They've also learned magnets have poles and that opposite poles attract one another. Magnets (like electricity next year) provide so many great opportunities for pure exploration and inquiry. Like cursive, it's always a big hit.

In other studies, we're reviewing a variety of content in math (right  now: subtraction strategies) and enjoying book clubs in reading workshop.

That's it. I hope you've all had a great week as well!