Birthdays, Meetings, and Poems

We're all very excited to embark on our spectacular, overnight adventure on Wednesday. It's a true honor for me to step out into the grander world with your kiddos. This trip is one of those unique experiences that leaves the kids feeling more connected and more independent at the same time. If you haven't already, be sure to let me know if there's anything extra I can be doing to support your child and make sure this trip is full of growth and fun for him or her. 

Smiles!

Happy birthday Max!

Max is in the seat of honor while his classmates shower him with loving kindness. Everyone (including Max!) shares a couple things that they love about Max or a couple of reasons why they're glad he's on the team. I think that our friends' birthdays are a great moment to talk about sincerity-- about what it feels like to really see one another and share the whole truth, straight from your heart.

Spelling practice:

Below, students identify subtraction problems in which...

1) they need to do no regrouping

2) they need to regroup the tens in order to have enough ones in the ones column

3) they need to regroup the hundreds in order to have enough tens in the tens column

4) they need to regroup the both the tens and the hundreds in order to complete the algorithm

Then they define patterns and rules for efficiently identifying the different types of subtraction problems without solving the problems first. This helps the students look more abstractly at the mathematical structure of the algorithm.

Emmy is deciding where to place the next line break in a beautiful poem called "Stacking Wood".  We're trying our hand at some of the strategies that great poets use to give their poetry a rhythm and musicality.

Studying lines for Readers Theater:

Congratulations Hugo! Hugo did a fantastic job facilitating the first student-led Class Meeting of the year. He led a discussion about the possibility of getting a class pet. He kept the excited energy up while he also brought awareness and seriousness about the responsibility that it would be. I'm excited to see how this discussion moves forward in the next Class Meetings.

Here's a sneak peek at P.E. fun with Kathy: 

Happy birthday Luca! Luca rocked Room 7 with some funky harmonica grooves :)

I know that he felt touched to hear such genuine respect and admiration from his friends.

Thanks for write, write, writing a response to the Fluency Write prompt at Back to School Night. The kids were really excited to read what you wrote after they responded to the same prompt this morning.