Readers, Writers, Mathematicians, Ambassadors, Poets

We're so excited for our field trip to the Poets in the Galleries program at the de Young on 10/16 and 10/23! Thanks so much to the drivers who signed up with Genevieve. And, of course, thanks to Genevieve for organizing that for me. The 5th/6th and 7th/8th grade classes have both completed the program and the feedback from Evan and Javier is so exciting. 
http://deyoung.famsf.org/education/poets-galleries

Reading

We’re digging into our Dear Mr. Henshaw texts! We are working our way through the book, reading independently, listening to me read aloud, and reading aloud in small groups. Students are investigating the character traits that define Leigh Botts, Mr. Henshaw, and Leigh's parents. We’re searching for the meaning “beneath the surface” of the text for a more complete picture of the characters. Students ask themselves questions like, “what does this passage say about who Leigh is? What matters to him? Why? How do you know? What evidence can you find in the text?”

Next, we will move on to analyzing the ways that Leigh’s life experiences inform the character traits we've identified.

As we read, we keep track of the words that confuse us, that are difficult to spell, that are interesting, or that we might like to try and use in our own writing. We put them up in our “Words that make us wonder” wall and revisit them regularly. 

We are also writing letters to our favorite authors, a la Dear Mr. Henshaw!

Students continue to enjoy time with their independent reading books as well.

 

Ambassador Workshop

We have successfully completed three parts of our four-part Ambassador Workshop series! Throughout the year, the students rotate through the weeklong position of Team 34 Ambassador. In that post, they are responsible for really stepping up as leaders. The Ambassador facilitates the class meeting, reports back their observations of whether or not the class successfully upheld their social contract during the afternoon specialist classes, and greets visitors to the classroom. We’ve been working on greeting visitors with a welcoming smile, eye contact, and a firm handshake. 

Writers’ Workshop

We’re on the final leg of our personal narrative writing unit in which the students use everything they have learned about effective personal narrative writing to draft and ultimately publish their best writing. The writers have been living like writers, seeing the fiber of their lives as worthy of recording. Now the students have selected what they feel is their strongest small moment story, the one that says the most about who they are and that they are most excited to share with readers. They are creating a new draft that utilizes everything they’ve learned. We will be developing and revising these particular stories until the end of the unit.

Math

In 3^rd grade math, we are deep into our review and strengthening of subtraction skills.  We model and build numbers with base ten blocks and explain how that relates to the algorithms we use to solve equations efficiently on paper. The students are feeling challenged by subtracting across zeroes. (2000-333=?) These numbers require the most precision and planning ahead and demonstrate strong executive function and understanding of regrouping.  We are also working to gain more automaticity with simple one-digit addition and subtraction facts.

In 4^th grade the students are deep in their work with multiplication. As with the addition and subtraction facts that came before, it is so crucial that 4^th graders develop automaticity with the multiplication facts so that when we can move into multi-digit multiplication, they can focus on developing clarity with those important algorithms. We use Making Math Real’s 9-lines visual imaging technique to image the math facts. We continue to do some modeling of multiplication with arrays and grouping and we are currently reviewing addition and subtraction with regrouping.

Poetry Club 

During this morning’s Poetry Club, the young poets listened to mentor poetry by Tennyson, Ric Masten, and Valerie Worth that modeled important strategies for generating poetry. They then chose a big topic/idea that gives them big, strong feelings. They then chose a small object or moment or detail that holds the big feeling for them to write, write, write about.

Here are some powerful examples:

As I read the words

they swim off the page

and swirl around in my head

to you

it may just be a dusty piece of paper

but to me it’s

an amazing story.

Time for this

time for that

time flies by

the hands

so easy to read

yet when you really think hard

it is so hard

like watches

on wrists

and clocks in homes

and clocks and time don’t grow on trees

valuable

you could say they are

and I would totally agree

Back and forth

across

the charge

the spark of light

on the world

of blackness

Revenge

Sometimes it swarms around you like

Like a mosquito on a

Warm night

Then one

Bites you

And you want to give it

Some revenge

Do you hear the big ideas and the small moments/objects that hold the feeling? Amazing!