Kiker's Strength-Based Learning Cohort

Starting at the end of the week -- 3rd grade participated in Kiker's annual Vocabulary Parade. Here's a glimpse into the fun! In ELA, we have been working diligently on individual writing projects. Our revision exercises with Active Verbs, Concrete Nouns, and Exploding a Word have improved our writing by leaps and bounds. In reading and social studies, we focused on critical thinking and key words. We used pieces of a nonfiction book about rock climbing to work on capturing the essence of the text in a summary, called the SAY. Next, we are examining how our thoughts, combined with text evidence, give us an inferential understanding, called the MEAN. Knowing these pieces helps us let go of detail and zero in on identifying the main idea in nonfiction. SBLC mathematicians have applied algebraic reasoning to input-output tables this week. These puzzles have given us opportunities to deepen our understanding about the 4 basic operations and to apply them in a different con...

Playground remodel update! Happy to report that ALL Kiker kids are loving the new space, and we are enjoying some peace and quiet as the new design has guided the games on the field. It's so neat to hear the kids talk about how their ideas matter ! It's been exciting this week to see them using so many strategies consistently and digging deep with writing. They now know the rules behind how authors create bodies of work, and they are beginning an individual writing project. They are using peers to edit, revise, and insure that the author's purpose is conveyed to the reader. It's fun to hear them justify things: "That's a conjunction, and the conjunction's job is to join things -- so there's two subjects in that compound sentence with one predicate on the second half." SO exciting for them to understand so deeply! We've finished our novel, Out of My Mind  by Sharon Draper. This week, we refined our theories about her struggle, located the cu...

Even with the weather delay, our SBLC family was in high spirits and accomplished great work on Saturday! Enjoy the pics of our finished product and the busy process... Thanks for all of your support and have a great week! Jen and Jewellyn

It doesn't seem possible, but we are down to our last 30 days of school...time flies! This week, 4th grade had the chance to show the state of Texas how hard they have been working in writing. We are so proud of their effort! Our supplies for our playground remodel PBL have been arriving all week, and as we have seen them come, our excitement has grown as well! We look forward to making our planning "come to life" as Zane so appropriately said. Hope the rain stays away long enough for us to get a lot done -- we appreciate those of you who have signed up and are willing to come help us with this endeavor! We actually got started today -- here are a few pictures of the progress! We've been focusing on discerning Melody's struggle in our novel study. We know that the book is comprised of many little "problems," but we need to find a common theme of those to find her true one struggle in the book. We've developed theories and are watching h...

No...we are hard at work as usual! You will be getting a letter today -- a product of our work in ELA this week. We are inviting you to Kiker Beautification Day on April 13th, and we are enlisting your help to finish our PBL Project to remodel our Kiker playground. They outlined, drafted, peer edited, and finalized these pieces - enjoy, and hope you can come! In reading, we are further along in Melody's journey. We've been summarizing, analyzing, and looking at why the author has selected experiences and how they tie into the character's struggle. We also have worked with short text, preparing ourselves for a specific type of looking at comprehension -- multiple choice assessments. Our mathematicians have been busy building accuracy with our weekly Monday Match-it. We're noticing that these puzzles are feeling easier and faster -- all great signs that we're building efficiency and automaticity! We wrapped up our study of 2-D and 3-D shapes by creating riddles ...