Kiker's Strength-Based Learning Cohort

Cozy nights, good food, and opportunities to share love and laughter with others. Thanks so much from the both of us for your generosity! Mrs. Mangels will be applying it to all the home renovations she's doing, and Mrs. Forrest will be using it to fly out to California to visit her oldest son, Matt. Thank you to everyone who donated time and/or materials to our holiday party. We all had a wonderful time creating and eating together. Good memories we will smile about. We have enjoyed building relationships with you and your kids this first half of the school year, and look forward to those growing in the second half! Relax, rest, and rejuvenate! We will see you in January! Best, Jen and Jewellyn

This week we wrapped up some graded opportunities, and we completed some self reflection and evaluation. We looked at expectations via criteria charts and rubrics to help us identify areas of growth and to set goals. This week Third Grade enjoyed the ballet at Austin's Long Center. The dapper dudes and dazzling damsels watched Act II of The Nutcracker. On Thursday, we attended the Kiker Keynotes' Winter Concert too. It put us in a festive holiday mood! In reading, we have been summarizing Winnie's journey across the Atlantic towards the battlefield with the Corps. She's also winning the hearts of all the soldiers and horses she's meeting. We are analyzing her characteristics and monitoring how situations now are giving us a glimpse into how she will handle future experiences. Expository drafting, editing, and revising are in full swing! We have used model pieces to help us better our writing and evaluate where we are now. Our sentence analysis/grammar have c...

In reading, we've enjoyed Winnie's silly behavior as she becomes a part of Lt. Harry Colbourne's veterinary unit. She's on the train, heading 5,000 miles towards WWI.  Our summaries are becoming more precise, and we are learning the art of paraphrasing to keep it concise. We are using letter form to complete our Literary Responses, so that skill is growing as well. "I love knowing that I can correctly use conversation in my writing!" the SBLC writers declare. They've been honing their skills using quotation marks and the punctuation that corresponds with all the ways you can show characters' words. We continue to refine our expository outlines and pieces as well. We've been exploring the specifics of maps and globes. It's been fun to dig deep into how scale, latitude and longitude, and keys/compass rose help us know where we are in the world. It's been fun to see angles, degrees, and parallel lines from math show up in social studies! ...