Classroom News!

It has been a fantastic first week of school! I am having so much fun getting to know your amazing, unique kids. This is what we have been up to this first week:

• Playing whole-group games and community building activities to kickstart friendships, cooperation, and sense of togetherness as a class.

• Graphing our preferences as mathematical learners – for example: who likes to convey their math thinking in pictures, and who prefers to use numbers, or words? Who likes to work in a group, and who prefers a partnership, or working alone? We created glyphs that represented our attributes as math learners, and then tried graphing them with bar graphs and Venn diagrams.

• Read-aloud – we launched the first day with a reading of Dr. Seuss’ Oh The Places You’ll Go! and several books by author Patricia Polacco. I am impressed with some of the high-level analysis I am hearing from kids already in our whole-group discussions about the underlying, implicit messages in these texts!  Next week we will dive in to our first chapter-book read-aloud!

• Launching the Reader’s Workshop – this week, we’ve been practicing the routine of finding books that are “just right” from the classroom library, and maintaining an atmosphere of quiet where everyone can do their best reading.  I am sensing we will need a lot of modeling and practice with these two core foundations - we will continue to work on these into next week as I begin individual reading assessments. 

• Introducing the Writer’s Notebook – we had discussions about why writers write, and brainstormed lists of potential topics for writing. 

• Brainstorming ideas for a Classroom Agreement. Next week we will hash out and finalize our class-collaborative agreement – students will have ownership of the rules they author and agree on based what they now know works and doesn’t work in our classroom.

This Week's Homework: "Summer Souvenirs" and "What's in a Name?" assignments. These were simple, fun, get-to-know-you assignments (pdf download here if you and your child need another copy).

Questions to ask your child about the week:

• How do you choose a "just-right" book?  How do you know if a book is too hard?  What is the "five-finger-rule"?

• What is a glyph? 

• When you are showing data, how might you know if a bar graph or a Venn Diagram is a better choice?

• What are some reasons people write? What did you choose to write about?

• What ideas do you have for Classroom Rules?  

I’ve had a few folks inquire about parent volunteer opportunites; we will discuss these at our Curriculum Night this Tuesday September 10th (6:00-6:40 and 6:50-7:30 pm). In the meantime, I can tell you that we will need 5 or 6 parent drivers / chaperones on the first Thursday of every month for our Field Studies at Wapato Park. Do get in touch if this sounds like something you’d be interested in!

Warm regards,

Asa