Kiker's Strength-Based Learning Cohort

We were so happy to have our first full week in a while...and got a lot accomplished in that time! In project, Mrs. Bankston presented a lesson on cyberbullying and kindness, and we completed some work that, connected with all students at Kiker, will be displayed in the cafeteria as a chain. In ELA, reading, and social studies, we've been integrating all the subject areas in a Vignette Project. Mrs. Forrest modeled a framework in planning a story, using CSERT and our text, I am Malala . We are finding that as we read as a reader, we can also discover craft as a writer, as well as gather information. We are creating stories around fictional characters using a real world setting. Truly, we are creating our own works of Historical Fiction. We've learned extensive ways to use websites, observe artifacts and primary sources, and text to research, and how to incorporate that information into our narrative stories. The plan is to apply this to Texas History. We'll choose a bat...

Our short week has been full of inspiring science projects and the opportunity to learn from each other's expertise. Enjoy this post full of SBLC science fair pictures and have a fantastic weekend!

2018 is in full swing! We had to make some adjustments to our schedule, but we have used every minute as mathematicians, writers, historians, and scientists! In reading and writing, we've continued our work on analyzing poetry. We are becoming figurative language experts, and are noticing, understanding, and using it in our own writing! Mrs. Forrest is modelling and showing us strategies on how to vary our sentences. Our study of Texas missions is wrapping up. We've learned how their lifestyle was vastly different from our own. We've also examined different perspectives on the influence of the Spanish culture on Texas then and now. We're moving right along in our fraction work, with 3rd graders learning about mixed numbers and making connections between fractions and division. 4th grade continues to build understandings about equivalent fractions and strategies for comparing fractions.  We completed our mid-year benchmarks, and we are so proud of the effort ea...

Welcome back to the third 9 weeks, SBLC families! We've been busy refreshing expectations and energizing our purposeful routines. We added a new routine called, "Mindful Minute" before our Take Off and Landing reflections each day. We watched a video of some high schoolers in California that do it each day, and learned from them why it's so helpful. We find too, that it's calming, it helps us review our day, and be more present in the moment.  We've also considered our Quality Work responsibilities and set a math and ELA goal to support our habits as learners. In math, everyone has enjoyed concrete fraction experiences to wake up our brains after winter break. We all built fraction puzzles, predicting the fractional relationship for each row and then creating a fraction resource for our math notebooks. 4th graders went on to create rulers, then to divide and label the fair shares. This led to thoughtful discussions about equivalent fractions and how to c...