Hi parents!
How was your first week back into the school routine? We had a great week here! The primary goal of our first days together was to begin to establish our class community. We read stories and completed group challenges to get to know each other and set expectations for the year.
- Throughout the week, we have been reading autobiographical short stories. We read Chameleon, a short story written by a teenage boy who bought an expensive pair of shoes in order to fit in with his peers. He then learned that wearing his new shoes did not lead to receiving compliments and making friends. Instead, he simply disappeared into the crowd of other students in the same shoes. Ask your child what they thought about Chameleon! We have also been reading narratives from Eric Carle’s Flora and Tiger. While reading these short stories, we underlined words that brought up questions, highlighted words we didn’t know, and made notes about what we knew about the author’s identity based on the story. This year we will continue to practice annotation strategies and continue our study of autobiographies and personal narratives.
- Our week was a combination of getting to know each other and getting to know ourselves. Students participated in ice breaker games like answering Would you rather? questions, introducing themselves with an animal name, and working towards a common group goal to “save Fred” with Mr. Chris’s class. Students also started to brainstorm ways to describe themselves by creating an identity chart filled with words that help define them. The class then used these identity charts to begin to make their own identity drawing. The drawings were inspired by the cover of our first class novel, The Next Great Paulie Fink, which includes the outline of a middle school student filled with pictures that represent various parts of the story. Ask your child what they included in their artwork!
- One of our favorite challenges this week was Let’s Make Squares! Try it out at home! Each group was provided 12 popsicle sticks. Each popsicle stick color was assigned to only one student so each group member could only move a few of the supplies. The goal was to make 1 square, then 2 squares, then 3…up through 12 squares! Each time using all 12 sticks and following the additional rules (no stacking sticks, for example). This was excellent practice in working together in groups, setting expectations for group-work norms in our classroom, defending our mathematical solutions (you could not just say “this is a square,” your classmates had to be convinced based on geometric facts), and perseverance. Multiple times groups wanted to give up on the challenge at hand, but relied on each other to find motivation to try again. Our class is making progress chipping away at the 1-12 chart with only a few blank sections!
- I’m sure you heard….Cornflake made an escape between Friday’s Meet the Teacher and Tuesday’s first day of school!! Thankfully, he decided to make his way back! We made sure to give him attention this week and allow time for him to get to know each student in class.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend! See you next week 🙂
-Ms. Anna
