09/14/2019

 

Dear Parents, 

 

We had another excellent week in Room 6! Please see below for a few points from our week. 

 

• On Monday we started our new novel, The Iliad! We read the prologue and started piecing together the complex characters and story-line by drawing a picture summary of what we learned. Only two chapters in and we are loving the book! On Wednesday the class was begging me to assign homework from the book! With each student having their own copy of the novel, they are able to follow along during read alouds, use the book to draw/write their chapter summaries, and can bring their book home to share with you.  
• Throughout the week, we have completed a few activities from Week of Inspirational Math (WIM) (www.youcubed.org/week-inspirational-math/#wim). We watched a video clip that explained the importance of believing in yourself to help your brain grow when learning new things. We also used graph paper to try to find the longest path from top to bottom with given restrictions. This led to a great conversation about various strategies used to find the best path and brought up points about what rules some people thought were implied while others “broke” the unspoken “rules.” On Friday we started our mathematician identity posters. Each student drew pictures to represent various parts of their identity and included somewhere on their poster the words “and I am a mathematician.” We discussed this does not mean that every math problem we face is easy to us or that we always get the “right” answer, but it means we will keep working through each new challenge and our brain will grow as we believe in ourselves and our mathematical abilities!

• On Wednesday we talked about the tragedy on September 11, 2001. This led to a conversation about the heroes of 9/11 and how we can participate in the 9/11 Day of Service (www.911day.org). I hope your kids talked to you about their good deed for the day! 
• This week we started something new! The first week of school, each student filled out a questionnaire about themselves. Using those answers, I post clues throughout the day about our mystery person of the day. The class has the day to guess who they think it might be before our big reveal the next day! See if you can guess who these students are 🙂 
  • My favorite food is junk food; My favorite place is home; My favorite video game is Roblox; One time I broke my leg on a trampoline; My favorite drink is water; My favorite color is lime green.
  • My favorite food is octopus; My favorite place is Greek Fest; My favorite drink is Sprite; My favorite video game is the Wii; My favorite color is yellow; One time I went on a canoe trip. 
• On Friday we completed a fun drawing and writing exercise. With a timer set, students drew whatever came to mind for a full three minutes. The class felt the three minutes flew by and they wanted to continue to work on their drawings when the timing was up! We then completed the same exercise with writing and had mixed reviews 🙂 Some chose to write about whatever they saw from the alphabet to labels on nearby markers, and others chose to write poems or stories! I encourage you to try it at home and see what pictures/writing you come up with!

• Buddy gallery walk of graphs with Ms. Bridget’s class:

• Building bridges:

• We love to read!

• Math and literacy games:

• More fun from the week: 

See you next week 🙂

-Ms. Anna