Kiker's Strength-Based Learning Cohort

Last week, we took a mathematical look at the "Twelve Days of Christmas". The song gave us an authentic opportunity to work together and practice solving multi-step problems with the use of addition, multiplication, and some calculator skills. How much would your true love really have to pay to shower you with twelve days of gifts? Check out the pictures below for our calculations!   There were a lot of gasps when we discovered just how much would actually be spent...we will definitely have a different perspective the next time we listen to the classic holiday song!

We had front row seats!!!! Here's a picture we took when we got back...

We did a poetry exercise today that will help our writing in several ways - first off, every line had to be completely focused on the topic. Secondly, they had to start each line with a verb - a PRECISE verb, that is. We used our Thesaurus to help us find more elaborate verbs, or the Visual Thesaurus on the iPad. The poems are called, "How to Be a...." We looked at a Mentor Text about snakes, and then did one together (How to Be a Student in Mrs. Forrest's Class). Even though we had brainstormed the verbs together, they ordered them and added on to them so that each was really different! You could hear their perspectives in them for sure... Next, we were turned loose to create our own, knowing that we'd be evaluated on our precise verb choice and focus...here are a few:

We've discovered a program called ipadio (pronounced like radio) that allows voice recording to be uploaded on the web. We thought we'd give it a try with a few reminders for the week. Enjoy! :) Mrs. Blake

While the Fourth Graders were off in San Antonio, Third Grade was hard at work with our Simple Machine Kits - here's some photos!

Today we re-examined the art of responding to nonfiction literature. We have learned the framework before, but in steps. We are focusing on pulling it all together into cohesive two and three paragraph essays. We started with the first paragraph, the summary. We have worked extensively on how to paraphrase and be concise, remembering that each sentence should contain essential main idea rather than details. We have moved into developing a second paragraph, where the kids explain something they inferred from the article and then provide a specific text example to support it. The fourth graders have been taking this depth of response to yet a third paragraph, were the focus is on the significance of the piece. Here they have to explain what the bigger understanding is -- now that I know this information, what is the importance? How can we apply this to life? Talk about rigor! The kids have been digging deep...it's way more than just telling me about what they read. It's syn...

I wanted to share some amazing writing with you! In our nonfiction/expository study this past few weeks, we have been learning to exercise our writing muscles with this genre. We have been reading, analyzing, and synthesizing a lot of great nonfiction, so we have found a great deal of good mentor texts to get us familiar for writing. What's the point? This activity had us examining author's purpose and message in order to help us come up with a solid central idea for our own piece.  We looked at four different texts, all dealing with the same topic, but with different "points." They were all about immigration, but one was a biography, one was a textbook, another literary nonfiction (nonfiction written in narrative form), and the last was a memoir. We charted the different themes and what the authors' central ideas were. We then examined how every bit of each of those texts supported and focused on that main idea. Next, we used a topic, "The best thing a...