This week we have been examining how the brain truly LOVES challenge, and challenge, in turn, brings struggle and failure. Which is NORMAL, natural, and actually GOOD. We do, however, need to have a mindset that we are resilient -- we can "bounce back" -- from what we are currently seeing as setbacks. We talked about mindful strategies which keep us present in the moment. Resilience takes positive self talk too, and our morning meetings had us sharing phrases we can tell ourselves to keep us moving forward.
Mrs. Bankston visited this week, and her lesson had us discovering our "spirit animal" when it comes to tough situations. Ask your child what they identified with and why! We also had time to listen to some amazing jazz on Friday morning in person with the Austin Jazz Ensemble.
We have been challenged and resilient as we are putting together our Point of View Historical Fiction Vignettes. We are putting ourselves in one of Texas' famous oak trees and telling a bit of history from the oak's eyewitness account. That takes a lot -- it's not just knowing what happened in the event. A writer needs to know the setting, the culture, the dress, the tools/technology of that time period. They're excited to write, but it's no small feat!
In language arts, we have flexed our muscles in mechanics and sentence structure. It was so cool to sit together this week and basically speak "Sentence-ese" -- a whole different language! Coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, dependent and independent clauses, commas, subjects, predicates -- our vocabulary has exploded. We are able to build and analyze sentences knowing each of these pieces so well.
In math, we are becoming increasingly independent with several powerful weekly routines. Every Monday we build computation, accuracy, fluency, mindfulness, and often resilience with our Match it puzzle. Each Wednesday there's a new problem of the day and we challenge ourselves to translate an event into the language of equations and various numerical representations. Fridays remind us that math is open and creative, and that we are a community of mathematicians. We take academic risks, make informative mistakes, think differently, respectfully disagree, and build mental math muscles. It's been exciting to realize how far we've come in our independence with these 3 routines and that the level of math we're able to understand has changed so much over time. This week has also been about fractions, equivalency understandings, and considering how to combine fractions with like denominators. Most of all, it's been about representing fractions with physical models and visuals like number lines. Your child can tell you about our first official fraction number talk and the many ways we conceptualized 3/4 +3/4. Our white board was full of strategies!
Enjoy your 3-day weekend and thanks for reading!
Mrs. Bankston visited this week, and her lesson had us discovering our "spirit animal" when it comes to tough situations. Ask your child what they identified with and why! We also had time to listen to some amazing jazz on Friday morning in person with the Austin Jazz Ensemble.
We have been challenged and resilient as we are putting together our Point of View Historical Fiction Vignettes. We are putting ourselves in one of Texas' famous oak trees and telling a bit of history from the oak's eyewitness account. That takes a lot -- it's not just knowing what happened in the event. A writer needs to know the setting, the culture, the dress, the tools/technology of that time period. They're excited to write, but it's no small feat!
In language arts, we have flexed our muscles in mechanics and sentence structure. It was so cool to sit together this week and basically speak "Sentence-ese" -- a whole different language! Coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, dependent and independent clauses, commas, subjects, predicates -- our vocabulary has exploded. We are able to build and analyze sentences knowing each of these pieces so well.
In math, we are becoming increasingly independent with several powerful weekly routines. Every Monday we build computation, accuracy, fluency, mindfulness, and often resilience with our Match it puzzle. Each Wednesday there's a new problem of the day and we challenge ourselves to translate an event into the language of equations and various numerical representations. Fridays remind us that math is open and creative, and that we are a community of mathematicians. We take academic risks, make informative mistakes, think differently, respectfully disagree, and build mental math muscles. It's been exciting to realize how far we've come in our independence with these 3 routines and that the level of math we're able to understand has changed so much over time. This week has also been about fractions, equivalency understandings, and considering how to combine fractions with like denominators. Most of all, it's been about representing fractions with physical models and visuals like number lines. Your child can tell you about our first official fraction number talk and the many ways we conceptualized 3/4 +3/4. Our white board was full of strategies!
Enjoy your 3-day weekend and thanks for reading!
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