Newsletter: December 11th

 Hey Everyone,

The kids have been hard at work this past week researching facts about a country they're interested in learning more about. There were so many great choices to select from. 

The series of books we used to make our selections is called
Countries We Are From. This series features dozens of choices
across every continent. The nice thing about these books is the fact
there are many great facts inside yet the books are still very comfortable
reads for most everyone in the class.

Last week we read a number of different books from this series as a class and in partnerships to begin learning about the types of information they share and how this is organized. After a few days doing this as a whole class, the kids next worked in partnerships to identify and record facts they felt were interesting and/or important. Each of these experiences provided them support for the independent work they are doing now.

What does this "independent" work look like? Each day I model how they will collect facts, sort these into categories, and organize them onto a Google Jamboard. They have now collected most of their information and identified which facts are about the land/geography and which are about the people who live there. Once we finish collecting and organizing all of this we'll begin creating country books to share with the class. 

I'm incredibly proud of the work they've done these past couple weeks to prepare for and launch this research project. Now I need a little help from you. Before we can move on to the next step we need to ensure everyone is all caught up. So, I need them to show you the work they've done so you can help them get caught up, if need be.

Here's what they need to have accomplished before returning on Monday:

1. Have at least 15 facts recorded about their country. If they need more facts they can use their books on www.getepic.com or you could help them do a Google search.

2. Color code the facts that are about the land/geography (place a brown dot after these facts) and those that are about the people who live there (place a red dot after these facts).

3. Type out all their "land" and "people" facts on their Google Jamboard. This Jamboard is found in our Google Classroom under the "Classwork" tab. They've been using it the past few days and should know how to get there on their own.

Here you can see all of my facts are listed and I've coded the ones
about land with brown dots and the ones about people with red dots.

On my Jamboard I have now typed in all the facts I identified earlier as 
being about the land/geography of the Philippines.

Next, I typed in all my facts about the people of Thailand. This organization
is going to help us be better prepared to write our country books and even
provide a Table of Contents for our readers.

Most of the class is all caught up on these assignments but should still show you their work so you can make sure they don't need any revisions or other form of assistance. For those who are still working, they should be very close as well. If they don't have any facts about the land or the people, you might suggest they go back to their books and add a few more facts to their sheets of paper. 

Thanks so much for your help with this! I love projects such as these because they are so incredibly rich in literacy learning. That said, it's difficult to give all 22 the one-on-one support they deserve on a daily basis so your help is much appreciated.

Have a great weekend,

Chris