Kiker's Strength-Based Learning Cohort

We have really enjoyed with meeting with all of our family units this past week! 45 meetings is a lot, and it does take time, but we truly value both teachers getting that time to sit down with each of you. Thanks too, for your work last weekend going through the notebooks! Know that your child can bring them home to review with you anytime -- just make sure they return them the very next day. We work with the notebooks every day. Thursday night, your child brought home a permission slip to join NASA's Name the Rover Contest. We are endeavoring to write our first polished expository piece through this opportunity. If you don't give permission, no problem -- they will write the same piece, I just won't enter them in the contest. It's a perfect way to show them in an authentic, motivational way how to write to a prompt, choose a central idea, and explain with examples (in 150 words or less -- they'll have to be precise!). In reading, we are researching through n...

We have spent this week taking time to look back at all the learning, process, and growing we have done. The kids have looked through all of their notebooks and reviewed work products, work habits, and rubrics. Reading, writing, math, and word work notebooks all came home today. We talked to students about their responsibility in this. They need to set up or ask you for a specific time that works for you to review their work. Sit side by side and go through each notebook. They will be able to talk you through each activity and what it means. There is a reflection sheet -- one for math and one for ELA -- for you to fill out and return. As you go through, remember the questions/approach we talked about at Back to School Night. In addition, keep in mind that the kids definitely have a growth mindset and are already setting goals in areas they know are wanting to get better at. In reading, we definitely have a solid theory of Red's struggle. Now we are using each piece to make sens...

We are curious! Curious, inquisitive, watchful, observant... We've been exploring words in our spelling and vocabulary study to expand our understanding of how curiosity drives our learning! In reading, we've dug deeper into the character and setting of Wishtree . We've discovered the importance of STOPPING, pausing, and noticing what we've read. Taking the time to think, theorize, and process is going to make the difference between a surface "it was a good book" to a passionate "WOW! There's so much I want to tell you about this book!" Our writing has taken a new, much improved, slant. We are working to make the focus of the piece not an event -- where writing becomes a list of things done -- to focus on the character. They are learning to show a change, a trait, or something significant about the PERSON. That's the real story. We are revising and editing along the way! We wrapped up our place value unit this week, although we continu...

This week things have been rolling along, and we are now getting into a natural rhythm with our schedule. Readers have been investing in their character Red, in Katherine Applegate's latest novel, Wishtree.  They have been learning about the power of really slowing down and looking at ALL parts of the beginnings of books -- the blurb, the dedication, pictures, poems -- all are crucial parts, and all is done ON PURPOSE by the author. Good readers pay attention to all of that. Red has deemed us trustworthy of an important story, and we are on pins and needles to find out what it is (plus we feel a high responsibility to pay attention and be worthy of this great honor 💓 ). In writing and word work, we have been exploring the power of how sentences are crafted. It's not just about having a capital at the beginning and a punctuation mark at the end. It's also having a subject, a predicate, and organizing all the words to have the impact we desire on the reader. We have work...

This week we finished drafting and creating our Courage Projects. We implemented phrases that have Kind, Specific, and Helpful thoughts to encourage one another to make this clearer for an audience. We also used our rubrics as tools to evaluate where our work was, and we also used those descriptors to help us "level up" and elevate the quality of our work. This week we finished drafting and creating our Courage Projects. We implemented phrases that have Kind, Specific, and Helpful thoughts to encourage one another to make this clearer for an audience. We also used our rubrics as tools to evaluate where our work was, and we used those descriptors to help us "level up" and elevate the quality of our work. In reading, we've been examining characters -- analyzing traits, determining their struggles, and identifying ways they changed. We have been learning to prove our thinking with evidence from the text too. In our word work, we looked at ways soun...

We have been hard at work -- so much learning packed into five short days! We continue learning routines and procedures that set us up for success all year long. These include choosing just right books, collaborating effectively, finding our best spaces for independent work, using rubrics and criteria to improve the quality of our work, and lots of community-building. We're off to a great start with daily morning meetings, learning the names of all 45 classmates, and organizing our notebooks/supplies. These first two weeks have also included lots of social-emotional learning (SEL) lessons, some of which we've crafted into mantras that help us through the day. Your student knows these two mantras already: I think before I act or speak and I focus when I listen . We've also talked about how readers, writers, scientists, and mathematicians all learn best with a growth mindset. This means we know that our effort creates our abilities and that all of us have limitless pote...

We made it! We are sure your kiddos, just like us, are tired...lots of learning, new names, faces and routines! Here's a glimpse! Remember to send in the decorated notebooks on Monday. We are using them first thing! Relax, get some rest, and we will be ready to hit the ground running on Monday!