September

Our community of learners has been busy on this short week! In this third week, we've been polishing routines and setting a few more organizational pieces into place.

We've begun Flexible Instructional Time (FIT), which is a school-wide time of day for each classroom to work in small groups, differentiate, and have various programming through the school. We are enjoying the variety of opportunities during this time.

SBLC scientists have been hard at work! We reviewed safety expectations for experiments and investigations, then enjoyed observing liquids in motion. Scientists observed 3 different liquids at two different temperatures. We communicated our observations in pictures and words, then shared claims about why one liquid stayed on top and why warmer water dissolved food coloring faster. Students had many different theories and evidence from their observations to justify their reasoning. We've decided to further explore density and molecular motion in the weeks to come. Our observations led to lots more questions...such fabulous curiosity!



We continue to build our understanding of place value this week, and we've also been learning about routines that will support upcoming math center rotations. Our centers will include opportunities to build numerical fluency, so we took time to reflect on some of the games we've been playing and considered how they help us become flexible, accurate, and efficient mathematicians. We played the Subtraction Game with partners this week and also used an online tool called Break Apart. Both of these opportunities help us to develop various strategies to calculate, require accuracy, and help us build efficiency with basic facts in a strategic way. Finally, we all generated criteria and designed currency for the SBLC economy. As students finish creating their thoughtful designs, we'll vote for 6 final bills that reflect our theme and values.

SCOOT 

In our Humanities blocks, we've worked with more nonfiction text. This time it was a Web-based resource through our Kiker Library called Wonderopolis. We applied current knowledge about nonfiction text features and added a few more that are specific to this genre. We formulated questions, thoughts, and epiphanies as we annotated the article. Discussion was lively, and our contributions pushed our thinking to deeper levels. Students' thinking guided the conversation, and they owned it! We also worked on Capitalization -- and revised some current work in our Climbing Guide to reflect our understanding that proper nouns are always capitalized!

Collaboration in action!

Class created anchor charts to share thinking too!

Independent writing!

Be sure your student sits down with you and shares their weekly Climbing Guide. The work we've done here is the basis of our community building -- our relationships develop with collaboration, contribution, and connection!

Have a fabulous weekend!

Jen and Jewellyn