It's been a while! Although, I feel connected to each of you through our amazing night together to showcase student voice around the subject of Black History. I will never forget standing off to the side and letting the hum of voices and the visual of sharing wash over me. It truly was the best way to end our unit and will be a teacher memory I will always treasure. So, thank you. We currently are the keeper of 51 books from the public library. About 2/3 of those books are for immigration and the rest for climate change. Immigration is our next social justice topic for read aloud. The rest are for our current IB unit. Speaking of IB.... The central idea for our current unit is: Adaptations support survival. We now understand there are two different types of adaptations: behavioral and physical. I wanted to weave in some environmental consciousness into our unit so we are going to add mutations to our understanding of adaptations. We are using mutations as a way to identify the negative impact humans are causing animals. We already completed the relationship between pesticides and the decline of bees. Next we will look at climate change and polar bears. We will end with litter/plastic and sea turtles. For each animal, students are researching animal facts on websites I have previewed, taking notes, and reporting those notes to the class. Then students are completing a How The World Works book to integrate writing into our unit. Students are taking various approaches to their book and include the following: comic book, nonfiction, fictional book where characters are teaching the reader, and pictures with labels. Isn't that amazing! Our final assessment will be to create an adaptation for an animal that will better equip them to handle human impact. Students can use one of the three animals we have researched in class. They will also be given the option to research a separate animal (in the same way we did in class) to create an adaptation while connecting it to human impact. My hope (dream) is to use claymation for their final assessment. So, students would create a 3-D habitat, their animal and adaptation with clay and explain their creation as a voice over. It may not happen depending on time and resources but that's the goal. If you have any experience with claymation and could come in to help, please let me know! Family Friday Every Friday we have stations geared around math. Sometimes I use that time to reteach things we need small group instruction in. Sometimes I use that time to connect and have fun with students to support relationship building. Last Friday we played dominoes! It is so rewarding to spend time with each student in a small group setting. It's the perfect way to end the week. I wanted to extend an invitation to you to join us! The only stipulation is you are in charge of figuring out the game to share. We have dominoes, dice, and cards if you need them. Sometimes, we have had a special snack during those times so you could bring that if you wanted, too. (If you are going to bring a snack, please let me know so we can be sure and respect our food allergies.) The times are the following: 12:20-2:20 or 1:00-3:00. Please send me an email with the Friday you can come and we will get you on the schedule. Most likely we will be doing it every Friday for the rest of the year. Please remember FRIDAY is the only day we can do stations. #thankfulthursday
Every Thursday, we show appreciation to an adult at school. Having a real audience to write to is important. But, the most important reason we do it is being appreciative can help shape our behaviors, increase motivation and give a sense of belonging. We have written notes to all our janitorial staff, specials teachers, Mr. Keefer, secretaries. We will continue to do this for the rest of the year because we have more people to thank! Math We have been working through math standards at a quick rate. Several times I haven't given a pre-assessment because I know enough about student's ability to predict it will take one lesson for mastery. We are almost done with place value. Our next focus will be measurement. Please practice those math facts! Reading Tomorrow we are starting new reading groups. This week I did a quick check in on students because some reading groups weren't feeling quite right. In addition, I've added a 6th group which means I will be meeting with 3 different groups a day to read. I'm so impressed with the reading growth that has happened. I know a HUGE part of that is all the work and practice that goes into reading at home. So, thank you! Here is the directions for logging on to Myon at home: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uwPP3lIyvwd3Yg6jKtoGFMdN_BhUwXOwJIVV0f-n2ys/edit?ts=583df7a7 Research Article I read this article and wanted to pass it on: www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-girls-boys-brilliant-20170126-story.html Basically, research shows by age 6 girls are less likely to believe they are as smart as boys. I'm so glad we started the year with Women's History because all 25 of our students have a list of positive and powerful words to describe women. Coming up! Student Led Conferences: May 3rd 5:30-7:30 Please expect to see a student reflection on IB profiles, students sharing their reading group book, Lexia and Myon and an overall viewpoint about first grade. As you know, teachers did not complete a 3rd quarter report card. Which means, I don't have formal feedback to give you. In addition, student led conferences at Vernon are to be "student led" which means it isn't the time to have a conversation about academic and behavior performance between parents and myself. Not only would this devalue the philosophy of students being in charge, as a teacher, it doesn't feel respectful to converse about personal narratives in a group setting. Additionally, since the time slot is 2 hours, there definitely isn't enough time to have 25 individual conversations. I know the absence of a 3rd quarter report card isn't ideal and can seem unsatisfying when wanting to know specifics about student performance but please trust me; if there were concerns from me, I would be communicating those directly to you. IB Night: May 10th 5:30-7:30 Please expect to see the class created notes from past units. (You already saw all our work from our last unit.) And, the work in progress of our current unit.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
September 2017
Categories |