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 culminating situation, and watched as Melody's struggle resolved. This novel had us on the edge of our seats. There were tears, celebrations, and new awareness thanks to Sharon's work. We continue to examine how to apply that learning in our lives with questions like, How do I react/think about people with disabilities? People who think/act differently than me? How do I notice rather than judge? Answering these questions for ourselves will help us think about common humanity and lead to acceptance. Wrestling with how we APPLY our new understanding is going to be key. Awareness is nothing unless it becomes action.
SBLC mathematicians have been working with measurement of all kinds this week. Through a variety of learning experiences, we've used customary and metric distance measurements. We played a game called Race to a Gallon to help us visualize and remember common customary equivalencies. As scientists, we use milliliters frequently, and converting between liters and milliliters involves very friendly numbers because of our place value system. By Wednesday we were working with time measurement conversions and enjoyed a fabulous struggle calculating the number of hours left in the school year. We all arrived at a total of 188 hours and 30 minutes. The fun was just beginning for many of us who then converted those hours all to minutes and then to seconds. Our final answer for the remaining 25 days of school:
We will use every one of those seconds intentionally, too! As scientists, we explored roots by harvesting a few radishes from the keyhole garden and concluding our root experiment with new botanical vocabulary. "Geotropism" describes how plants respond to the force of gravity. We're now synthesizing all we've learned about flowering plants and how their structures work as a system. The week ended with the arrival of mosquito fish and aquatic snails, so we constructed aquariums to support our investigation of ecosystems over the next few weeks.
We also enjoyed the fabulous Austin Jazz Ensemble on Thursday...a musical end to the week!
Enjoy your weekend!
Jen and Jewellyn
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 culminating situation, and watched as Melody's struggle resolved. This novel had us on the edge of our seats. There were tears, celebrations, and new awareness thanks to Sharon's work. We continue to examine how to apply that learning in our lives with questions like, How do I react/think about people with disabilities? People who think/act differently than me? How do I notice rather than judge? Answering these questions for ourselves will help us think about common humanity and lead to acceptance. Wrestling with how we APPLY our new understanding is going to be key. Awareness is nothing unless it becomes action.
SBLC mathematicians have been working with measurement of all kinds this week. Through a variety of learning experiences, we've used customary and metric distance measurements. We played a game called Race to a Gallon to help us visualize and remember common customary equivalencies. As scientists, we use milliliters frequently, and converting between liters and milliliters involves very friendly numbers because of our place value system. By Wednesday we were working with time measurement conversions and enjoyed a fabulous struggle calculating the number of hours left in the school year. We all arrived at a total of 188 hours and 30 minutes. The fun was just beginning for many of us who then converted those hours all to minutes and then to seconds. Our final answer for the remaining 25 days of school:
We will use every one of those seconds intentionally, too! As scientists, we explored roots by harvesting a few radishes from the keyhole garden and concluding our root experiment with new botanical vocabulary. "Geotropism" describes how plants respond to the force of gravity. We're now synthesizing all we've learned about flowering plants and how their structures work as a system. The week ended with the arrival of mosquito fish and aquatic snails, so we constructed aquariums to support our investigation of ecosystems over the next few weeks.
We also enjoyed the fabulous Austin Jazz Ensemble on Thursday...a musical end to the week!
Enjoy your weekend!
Jen and Jewellyn
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