Kiker's Strength-Based Learning Cohort

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...