Kiker's Strength-Based Learning Cohort

  Dear SBLC families,      We are so grateful for all of you! Thanks for the gorgeous rosemary trees and for all of the gift card goodies we found in the branches. Both of us look forward to a little shopping and relaxation over winter break. We loved the chance to visit with you at our winter party and so appreciate all of your contributions to our tasty breakfast buffet and our cute penguin craft.      We were able to fill 7 backpacks as a donation to Carrying Hope. Your generosity will help a lot of kiddos in need of some comfort at a challenging time and we love that our community showed such support!      Here's a glimpse into our week through some fun pictures! Happy Holidays all - see you in January!

What a busy, festive week!  3rd graders enjoyed our field trip to the Long Center for The Nutcracker and graciously posed for a few photos: In science, we finished our class science project notebooks and all students took home this example of a quality science fair notebook.  Each science fair participant also brought home a suggested timeline for managing this project at home, so please ask your scientist about this important tool.  We are excited about your student's ownership of his or her science fair project, and have heard fabulous testable questions and experiment plans.  We've also been herpetologists at work, learning all about our visiting leopard gecko. In math, we've enjoyed conversations about the SBLC economy as we prepare for the first store next week. Students designed currency that reflected SBLC values and our outer space theme, then cast an electronic ballot to vote for their favorite in each denomination. They also calculated the total numb...

We're finally enjoying some cozy December weather this week! We hope you all enjoyed the snow this morning and look forward to hearing snow stories when we all return to class on Monday. In math this week, 4th graders have moved from a concrete to an abstract understanding of long division and are now building fluency with this strategy. We continue to apply division to real world situations and to consider how remainders affect our solutions. 4th graders have also been connecting their fraction and decimal understandings with a decimal number line game and an ongoing visual proof decimal challenge. 3rd graders are becoming financially literate and learning all about economic concepts such as scarcity and the relationship between human capital and potential income. We've have some powerful discussions about planned and unplanned spending decisions, and have enjoyed both online and classroom simulations to bring these concepts to life. We are definitely expanding our vocabul...

We've come back from a wonderful break, refreshed and ready to learn! SBLC students have been hard at work and jumped in with both feet! We hope you enjoyed looking through the portfolios at the halfway point, and it launched some conversations about keeping up the Quality Work they are doing! We've been enjoying the weather via our outdoor space! Lots of fun varying up our learning environment! Our project time has focused on our Service Project for Carrying Hope. Students have learned about the organization and who they help, created a sign up, and are eager to build these important packs to help a child their age. Check your email for a student-designed donation sign up. In ELA, we've been learning how to actively annotate, take notes, cite sources, and summarize text! Our in class research has been supporting our experimentation in science, and has helped us complete our In Class Science Fair Project Notebook. We've been learning about insulators, me...