Room 104 Week 9 | Ms. Anna W.'s Class

Hi parents!

Take a look at what we’ve been up to this week 🙂

Throughout this week we have been reading various picture books about kindness, teamwork, and befriending others. On Wednesday with Ms. Vash, we tried to stack cups into a pyramid. Sounds easy enough, but you can’t actually touch the cups! It was a fun partner challenge that also allowed us the opportunity to talk about what teamwork looks like, sounds like, and feels like. We ended the week with a challenge to complete an act of kindness. One of our books (Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson) compares acts of kindness to stones dropped in water — they ripple out. Our class was so excited about the challenge that many chose to find multiple ways to spread kindness! Room 104 is now full of notes and pictures telling each other how much we value each other’s friendship. This was also mentioned as a high point for many people while we discussed our highs and lows from the week.

Earlier this week we practiced our Visual Thinking Strategies by looking at the electoral map from 2016. Students were eager to share what they knew about political parties and apply what they knew to this year’s election. I was particularly impressed by how many students had already heard of the Electoral College or already had some understanding of it! We’ll continue to analyze data from this year in the coming weeks.
This week we mixed up our Holes summaries! Instead of only writing and drawing, we wrote skits about two of the chapters and performed them for each other. Some people went as far as to paint their nails at home to match their character! Every one of the actors who played Mr. Sir fully committed to screaming on the ground pretending they had rattlesnake venom on their face! Each partner group had the audience laughing 🙂 Acting helps us to better understand what we read. By creating props and connecting with each character, we bring the story to life! We agreed that this would be something we’d like to continue doing with other stories in the future.