Kiker's Strength-Based Learning Cohort

What a wonderful week off, and a wonderful week back. We started a new routine this week...writing down a few ideas of the GOOD we saw in our day. Here's a few glimpses: In reading, we have continued to follow Bear's journey from the Woods to Col. Colbourn's acquisition. We are using our signposts to identify more about Bear's character and to find the struggle he faces throughout the book. Our Again and Again signpost has us asking, "Why does this keep coming up?" and leading us to some good predictions. In ELA, we've been practicing more of our grammar with independent and dependent clauses, commas, conjunctions, and now quotation marks! Our writing is growing by leaps and bounds as we are able to craft complex sentences accurately with more confidence. Third grade had a great time at Sauer-Beckmann Farm! We learned about the people and their way of life in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It's amazing to see how they have preserv...

This week held some exciting events! Fourth Grade put on their dancing boots and performed their wonderful play THREE times on Thursday! We certainly appreciated all the hard work they put in to making it a spectacular performance! On Friday, we actively enjoyed Kiker's annual Track and Field! It's always such a great day of Team Building and bonding with one another outside the classroom! We were so lucky to have such beautiful weather too -- smiles all around! In reading, we started a new novel, Winnie's Great War . It's a historical fiction piece that gives an account of the real Winnie the Bear, a mascot for a Canadian Brigade in WWI. AA Milne was inspired by this orphaned black bear and his brave adventures to create Winnie the Pooh. It's a neat account based on the author's great-grandfather's diary. We also integrated social studies and nonfiction reading by reading, questioning,and analyzing an article about an inventor...

Fourth Grade had the fabulous experience of the Symphony this week! We enjoyed learning about how music has become more diverse as composers blended different techniques, notes, and rhythm. 3rd grade performed at the Veteran's Day assembly. Thank you to all of our Veterans!  SBLC mathematicians and scientists were busy designing tracks to finish our exploration of kinetic and potential energy, then wrapping up their technical drawings to apply new vocabulary. 3rd grade continues to build multiplication fluency and grow their division muscles with a variety of problem solving contexts. 4th grade is developing a deeper understanding of partial products and different pathways for multidigit multiplication. By week's end, 4th grade connected visual models and the standard algorithm as another efficient strategy for 2-digit by 2-digit multiplication.  We finished A Long Walk to Water  and have learned so many lessons. Salva's a true model of pers...

This week we've worked some agility muscles as our week was peppered with experiences! Book Fair assembly and preview has us excited to get our hands on some new books next week! Oh, and there were those necessary-but-not-loved Flu shots, and of course Halloween (and the day after). Many of our Climbing Guides reflect how we really exercised that Emotional Agility and Resilience! We also added some new plants, soil, and seeds to the keyhole garden. We hope to harvest some kale, cauliflower, and eventually radishes and beets. We'll talk more over the next weeks about compost and its function in the keyhole garden system. In reading block, we've been working together on the research process by digging in to how to find information, read it and annotate thoroughly, and then document and note take. They are ready to be independent in this process for Science Fair and well into their future. They learned the science of making candy (wow -- sugar + specific temperature = all ...