Kiker's Strength-Based Learning Cohort

Our week has been filled with celebration and reflection! The three of us want to express our gratitude for each and every one of you and the contributions you have offered to our SBLC family. We truly have enjoyed every minute of this year. Thank you for all the ongoing support and encouragement. We couldn't have done it without you! We are all excited for the time to relax and recharge this summer.  Thanks for your generous gift - we're all looking forward to some quality time at Travaasa!   Happy summer! Your SBLC coaches   

Our rising 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders have learned so much this year and we want to ensure that they retain all of their skills through the summer months.  We discussed how important it is to read widely for at least 20 minutes each day.  We learned that the average elementary student loses more than 2.5 months of math understanding over the summer and decided we want to continue growing our math brains over the summer, too. Your SBLC kiddo will come home today with a math and reading recording sheet.  We appreciate your help finding a great spot for this log to live through the summer.  Your student will bring this completed sheet back to school in the fall and we'll be excited to greet our confident readers and mathematicians.   A little info about summer slide for you...

This week's focus was growth mindset. It was a great review of how to grow our brains and have a positive outlook on mistakes and challenge. In the English Language Arts portion of the “Changemaker Project,” students researched using technology or family interviews. They selected 5 people from their heritage that made contributions in some way to our world. After fact finding, they discerned a precise verb for the action in their story. Using the pattern from the mentor text, So Our Children Can Soar by Michelle Cook, they developed a pattern story in chronological order which portrays each person and their contributions, and how those contributions led to others’ actions in making change in our world. Their pieces end with application to their lives as they illustrated their passion and how they will make change in the future. In the math portion of the “Changemaker” project, students used literary nonfiction and online sources to research famous mathematical changemakers....

This week began with our Third and Fourth Graders showing their hard work during the STAAR reading and math tests. We are so proud of their dedication to their learning all year long, and know that they felt well prepared! This week we've switched focus to our Changemaker Projects. In reading, we have been finding facts about influential people in our heritage that have made our lives possible today. We are creating individual books to celebrate those people, and to show how chronologically they have affected change in our present time. We also have a page that illustrates what/how WE will be changemakers through our lives. It's been exciting to find so many interesting people in our history! In math we've taken some time to make more connections between all of the concepts we studied through the year and how they apply beyond the walls of our classroom.  We're creating a series of posters that will grow as we make more connections these next few weeks.  We're a...

What a fabulous first week of May! We have been focusing on our calming and energizing strategies. We learned a few more ways to use breathing to help us, as well as some cross-the-body movements. We encouraged each other to be aware of opportunities to use these strategies, and have been building in these healthy habits. In ELA, we have finished all our novel studies, and have clamored for "one more book" before the end of the year. We will see!  We've been following our characters so closely -- coming to a close with them has us actually missing them!! We all finished publishing our work for our anthologies as well! Big Work! In math, we've finished a 2-week review of concepts.  It's been exciting to see how many meaningful connections we've discovered between topics and how much our math vocabulary has grown so far this year. We played several team games as part of our review work and decided our favorites were "Mathoo" and "Crumple a...

Prioritization was the theme of the week. We worked on making time for "big rocks" and letting the littler things come later. This week in ELA, we've been focusing on important review, as well as our novels. In Some Kind of Courage , we learned about how writers use the climax of a story, and how the resolution of the character's struggle then influences the remainder of the book. We cried together as Joseph finally found a home too -- happy endings are always good!  Fourth Grade actually invented a new Mnemonic for us...C SECRET -- Character -- Setting, Experience, Climax, Resolution, Evolution (character change), and Theme. AWESOME! We are so excited to know the complexities in writing, and how we can analyze it with such detail. We've all been finishing our final drafts, preparing for publishing next week. Math has also been about review of many topics and vocabulary this week.  It's been exciting for 4th grade to remember where they were at the beginni...

This week we've looked for OPPORTUNITY -- ways we can actively help others, stretch ourselves, and reflect on mistakes. It's been great taking responsibility of our choices, being aware of times when we can step up, and how we can be intentional about what we do when we recognize the opportunities we have. In ELA, we have been moving through our novels and finishing our writing pieces. 3rd and 4th have been using the Benchmark Test as a teaching tool -- an opportunity to practice with lots of teacher feedback. We were given the option to give it on one day or to space it out over a few, and we chose to take a few days as to really go deep with reflecting on our work when go over it. We ended the week with the 3rd Grade Vocabulary Parade -- fabulous words and representations!! 2nd and 3rd grade mathematicians explored more measurement this week, We discussed the importance of estimation and then put our estimating skills to work with length, area, capacity, and weight sta...