Kiker's Strength-Based Learning Cohort

Everyone loves a parade! Especially learning-related (and the dress up was fun too)! Third grade enjoyed creating fabulous expressions of a vocabulary word of choice and sharing that with our Kiker community. It was great seeing the varied choices of words! As readers, we learned about a new trailblazer, Razia Jan. Using several different sources, we learned about her and her work with education, compared her to Malala, and made comparisons to ourselves. More than ever, we are seeing the importance of using more than one piece to gather information. We discovered that, while there are differences in her school and ours, we are more alike than we are different. We are working to expand putting our thinking into written work through Double Entry Journals.  In social studies, we have read several nonfiction narratives about Harriet Tubman, Dave the Potter, Sojourner Truth. Each has taught us something more about the people, not just slavery as a subject. We are work...

This week we changed the location and style of how we set our intention for the day. Instead of a sentence in our Take Off and Landing Notebooks, you will see one word at the top of every day in our agenda. We talked about how that change will allow us to see our intention several times throughout the day, which will probably help us stay the course on our intentions! In ELA, we finished Malala's book! It's been an amazing journey. It has had us questioning, discussing, wondering, setting personal goals...simply put, a life changer for us as a community.Third Graders have been given instructions for next week's Vocabulary Parade. We will be walking the halls next Friday first thing in the morning, so feel free to join us to view our creativity with words! In social studies, we examined three different genres around the same topic. We learned about Henry "Box" Brown and his incredible sacrifice to escape slavery in 1849. So many questions here too! It brought t...

This week has flown! We began the week with our 4th grade writers working really hard on the writing STAAR. Kudos to them for their determination and for completing the challenge! In ELA, we've had the opportunity to walk further with Malala on her journey. We've heard and discussed some wise words. One that particularly stood out was simple, but so profound. Her doctor said to her, "I believe solutions arrive first, and then problems show up." Wow. To think that things occur in that order is extremely comforting...knowing there is a solution already present to help us work through something hard. A true life lesson.  We've also been talking through the healing process and how miraculous her survival was. She shares her struggle and we can see through her experience how the values in life can change. Before, she banked happiness on being the "top of her class" but now sees her happiness grounded in her true purpose of reaching others with a message o...

This week in project we've been self-reflective about our emotional responses and our amygdala's sensitivity to situations. We are learning how helpful it is to identify what we are feeling. We've also discussed how "growing a longer fuse" is a goal we all have in specific areas of our lives. Learning about how our brain and emotions are linked is so empowering in how we think about things and react! In ELA, we've done some important reviewing of revision and editing. We've examined mentor text to help us craft our own, and we've been making strides to improve our clarity in our expository pieces. Next week 4th Grade will have the chance to reach our readers on the STAAR writing. We know we are ready! In reading, we are anxiously watching how Malala is recovering in England. The questions she poses are causing us to examine what we too feel is truly important and how we react to adversity. SBLC readers are having deep discussions! Ask them what the...