Pine Class News
March 27
New beginnings
If you have any questions, please let us know.
Happy Spring!
Reading Spots
Thursday, we had a conversation about re-establishing our reading spots, and more importantly our expectations for independent reading. We told the children, "Being comfortable is important. But, getting as comfortable as possible is not our main goal for reading time. Our main goal is to do a lot of reading."
"Where do you do your best reading?", we asked them. The children were incredibly thoughtful and honest during this conversation. Many children who have struggled to get settled for independent reading chose new spots that are probably more supportive for them. We are excited for children to dive back into reading next week in an environment that is more conducive to sustained independent reading.
Ask your child, "How did you choose the spot where you do the best reading?"
Reading Stamina
Do you know how long your child can read independently?
This will be good to talk about in our conferences.
Problem Solving Conversations
The challenges that children experience responsibly using materials in our classroom are an echo of the curriculum we taught last year about mutual responsibility for commons.
This shows that we need to reteach parts of this curriculum so the essential understandings are applied to the children's daily life and are transferrable to many social contexts.
Thursday morning we began problem solving conversations about how to use materials like the pillows more responsibly.
Children said:
"Just take one."
"Some people don't need one."
"If there's just one left, and it's too small to share, maybe no one should get it."
We will support the children more this coming week by establishing clear rules for using these materials.
Reading Recommendations
Student Interviews and Books
We are part way through the interview process with Yashmin and Sky.
The process is as follows:
Day 1, children share with Jessica what she ought to know about a particular student, Paul takes notes
Day 2, Jessica interviews that child to learn more, Paul takes notes
Day 3, the child shares about a particular topic or interest, Paul takes notes
Day 4, the class looks back at all the notes and plans a book
Day 5 ... Paul drafts the book
Next week, children will start to take over some of the note-taking and writing responsibilities. We intend to interview and write a book about each child before the end of the year.
This can be seen as a supplement to our project time and writing curriculum, one that can help Jessica get to know the children, and give the children opportunities to express the important things about themselves and their classmates.
Hundreds Chart and Place Value
"There are columns of red numbers and columns of black numbers."
"The first column, all the numbers in it have ones."
"If you count diagonally, you can count by ones ... one, two, three... like if you look on the right side of the number."
"You can go diagonally the other way too, like if you start in the top right corner, and count back diagonally, it goes, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 ... "
"Right here, in the middle of the chart, it counts by ones again, one, two, three ... " student is pointing at 41, 42, 43 ...
"If you look at the tens it goes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ... all the way up to 10 when you get to 100 ... but the other columns just go up to 9."
"I think the even numbers are black."
"If you go from 10 to 20, that's ten more. And if you go from 20 to 30, that's ten more."
Try a version of this at home. See below ...
Ask your child to count by tens from a "random" starting place like 38.
Ask your child, what's one less than 29? What's ten more than 88? Where does 40 go?
Here's another ...
Folktales
To that end, we read one story, four times in one day! The students' attention hardly wavered. It was a highlight of the week. Ask them if they can tell you the story of Anansi and his six sons. There are many Anansi stories that we will read in the next few weeks. Watch out!
We also read a story called "Arrow to the Sun." Your children are probably less familiar with this one, but you could ask them to tell it to you. We will read it again, and a few more this coming week.
Please enjoy folktales that come home in your child's book baggie next week and help make sure they return to school so we can use them daily.
New Integrated Unit - New York State
The conversations that we have using the VTS process are consistently the most equitable moments of our time together - in terms of broad and inclusive participation.
We decided to use this approach to begin our next integrated curriculum study about New York State. Children said:
"The blue is probably water, because blue is usually a symbol for water."
"The yellow and brown probably show that it's autumn, because those areas are probably forests and at's what trees look like in autumn."
"I notice that there's white in some places and I think that is snow, like on mountains, because the tops of some tall mountains have snow."
"But there's also white where it says New Jersey, because New Jersey is in the middle of nowhere."
"No, New Jersey is not in the middle of nowhere. I used to live there and it's not that far away."
"But there's like two New Jerseys."
"No, I don't think there are two New Jerseys."
"Over here it says that green means 60 feet or meters and yellow means 200 feet or meters."
The upcoming topic is "How is Brooklyn connected to the rest of New York State?" It will be much more than political geography. We will focus on resources, connecting back to our first grade studies of commons, systems, communities, and we will compare and contrast
Make Art
This week students turned their etchings into prints. This is a very hands on process, so each child worked with a partner. Each child made 3 prints of their image.