Kiker's Strength-Based Learning Cohort

Our th ird graders enjoyed the Nutcracker Act II put on by Ballet Austin.  In math this week we all learned about personal financial literacy. We discussed fixed and variable expenses. For example, a car payment is a fixed expense and an electric bill is a variable expense. We also talked about making a profit, the cost of resources, saving options, deposits, and withdrawals. In reading, we practiced reading fluently, responding to text, and analyzing several holiday books for theme and author's purpose. Fourth Grade analyzed the first chapter of  The Coldest Day in Texas.  We are having a special author's visit from her on Monday, and we spent a great deal of time looking at the piece from both a writer's and reader's perspective. Speaking of writing, we continued to hone our skills of description and narratives. In science, we've continued our exploration of mixtures and solutions. We even discovered that we could separate a mixt...

Ready to get started on your Hour of Code?  Click the link below to code with Anna and Elsa! http://studio.code.org/s/frozen/stage/1/puzzle/1

We're back from Thanksgiving Break and ready to take on December! Before we left, we enjoyed Math Day. We completed activities to strengthen our number sense, discussed definitive entities, and graphed information using surveys we created. We also shared our November Homework, which is always inspiring. The level of pride and ownership our Shooting Stars display when sharing with their peers demonstrates true accountability. So proud of their hard work! Speaking of hard work, we decided to express our gratitude to our custodial staff for everything they do for our school. Last Tuesday, we became "Recycling Fairies" and secretly emptied all the recycling bins on campus. This task, which normally takes a large chunk of our custodians' time, was accomplished quickly with 66 compassionate helpers. Great job putting empathy into action, SBLC! This week has been full of hands-on exploration of mixtures and solutions in science...

Second Third Fourth

This week learned a great mindfulness strategy. We learned that our brains tend to focus on the negative in situations. We had a visual of a bottle with a thin neck that only lets in these smaller, negative "balls." The larger, and positive, green balls bounce off the top and don't fit in the neck. We need to OPEN the bottle neck. We can actually, "use our mind to train our brain," (Rick Hanson) We know that teaching ourselves to be optimistic helps our overall health, so this is important! We learned HEAL. Try it at home! It's super relaxing and calming! In reading we honed our skills as summarizers of fiction. We are CSERT experts! Focusing on the main Character, the Setting, narrowing the Experience they are having, watching for the Resolution, and finally, adding the Theme or lesson results in a very accurate summarization of the text. We practiced with a number of books, including one from our Dec. 15th visiting author. We enjoyed Phil Bildner...