Newsletter: October 3

Dear Families,

I hope you all are having a great week. Thanks so much to all who were able to make it out to Curriculum Night last Thursday. I know the kids loved sharing their work around multiplication with you. This has been such a fun inquiry with lots of opportunities to root our conceptual understanding in real life applications. We're now engaged in learning our multiplication tables. We began with the 0s, 1s, 2s and 10s because these are among the easiest to master. It's a great confidence boost before moving on to more difficult times tables. Pretty soon I'll be asking you to practice these math facts with the kids on a nightly basis for about five minutes. A little goes a long way. One game we've been playing to practice these facts at school is "Beat the Calculator." In this game two people square off - one uses their brain and the other uses a calculator. The first one to solve the multiplication problem gets a point. Because our problems are all so simple right now the brain nearly always wins. With time that'll change. That said, by the end of the year our hope is to be able to beat the calculator with consistency no matter what problem we're given. Committing these products to memory (referred to as "math fluency") in incredibly helpful now and down the road. Here are some pics from our game...

Another piece of our classroom work I'd like to highlight this week is our morning meeting. Each morning we gather in a circle to share current news articles and classroom journals. A great source for news articles is Newsela. This is a website that allows the kids to adjust a news article to their own comfort level in regard to its "reading level." As they make adjustments using a drop down menu the vocabulary changes in the article as does the article's length. The kids select, read and prepare their articles during our Exploration time. They're required to share at least one every month. Some topics shared and discussed so far have been...

* Billions of birds have disappeared since 1970
* Town selects a dog as mayor
* Boy finds fossilized tooth
* USC defeats UK
* Dutch city works to restore bee population
* Boy wears costumes at bus stop to greet his brother each day
* Woman swallows engagement ring
* Ms. Monopoly celebrates women
* Will the NFL ever welcome women?
* Fossil discovered resembling Loch Ness monster
* Plans being put in place for a Space Command Army
* NSA is watching you while you play Angry Birds
* Scientists create the blackest black
* Loch Ness monster might be large eel or a series of eels
* Cat is a fashionista model
* Death of a popular young actor
* Denver changes law to allow kids to sell lemonade without a permit

Of course, I share articles as well. We also watch select segments from CNN 10 every so often when I see something of interest to the kids or that I think will encourage a good discussion.

In addition to news articles the kids also share at least one classroom journal each month. Classroom journals are large booklets of paper where the kids can record their wonderings and then share these out with us so we can construct new knowledge together. Some questions are very straightforward. Others are far more challenging. One of the primary goals of these discussions is to help the kids learn to question the world - speaking back to those things that seemingly defy logic, explanation, or justice. Another goal is to learn how to discuss topics that invite a variety of perspectives within mixed company. One of the greatest things our kids could learn is to think critically about all they see and hear. Some of the topics/questions they've brought to our circle over the past month have been...

* Why is there gun violence?
* Why are there boy/girl names?
* What's in the wood that sets it on fire when you rub it together?
* Why are Halloween costumes separated by gender?
* How can colorblind people read the traffic lights to know when to stop and go?
* Why do toads have bumps?
* What is rubber made out of?
* Can our class make a class newspaper?
* Why are we paid for some chores but not paid for others?
* How do deer know what's poisonous to eat and what's not?
* Why do sloths move so slowly?
* What makes a rainbow?
* Should people be allowed to save spots in line?
* What sorts of options could we have for explorations?
* Why are objects in front of us so clear in the windshield but blurry when they get beside us?
* Can our class have some special days this year like pajama day?
* How do birds not get electrocuted on the electric line?
* Let me tell you about Rosh Hashanah
* Let me tell you some words I know in Spanish, Russian, and German

For the questions that are easily re-searchable, we discuss our thoughts but also access Google. A new classroom job is that of "Researcher." This person brings a Chrome Book to the circle with them and looks up information while we discuss such questions. While some may look morning meeting as something extra we do I'd argue it lies at the very heart of inquiry. It's one of my many favorite parts of the day.