Student reflections in the blog this week!

This week's post will be made entirely of student reflections!  I am simply copying and pasting writing from student's Google drives.

11/20/15

This week we started Band olympics. It is something we do in band to win prizes who has the most minutes they practices the most minutes.

Then we get to start basketball next week in P.e. M.r Blanchard told us  on monday.

We started abenaki research for a mini museum. (Joe)

What I liked this week is that I tuned my ukulele strings.  I didn't just tune it I learned a little bit how to play it.  Also the strings all have a different sound.  If the Neck is pointing to the left then the string on top is G.  The second one down would be C. The third one down would be E.  last of all the bottom one is A.  If the neck is pointing to the right then the strings are just reversed.  That is something that I learned and thought that is very important to know. (Madyson)

This week was very interesting because we had a lot of stuff going on. I love it when there is a lot of stuff going on because there is always something to do it makes it so  you are not bored. it is very easy to get bored when you are doing stuff for a long time!   That  is why I loved it this week.   This week we worked on the abenaki and more discussion protocols what is kinda boring because we kept doing it but other then that it was all fun. (Sawyer)

11-20-15         Since we are done with State Symbols, we are now working on a Abenaki work in discovery. We are making historical narratives about how it was like back then. When we are done with the historical narratives, we will make sculptures on what the story was like. Right now, I’m working still on my narrative, I want to look up a traditional ball game Abanaki children would play. I havn’t found anything yet about it, but I am still looking. Soon, it will be finished. (Greta)

In Discussion this week, we learned about a new protocol called Written Conversation. I sort of like it, and nobody talks (unless you're deciding who gets who’s book.) Here’s how it goes: First, like every other protocol, you read a book. Then, you write about the book. Next, you switch books with somebody in your group. They comment on it. Again, the writing switches to another person in your group. You keep repeating this process until your writing comes back to you. Finally, you look at the comments and then you comment on the comments. So, that’s my blog!

-Aaren

11/16 to 11/20

Abanaki research was productive this week with lots of writing and hard work.  (Tag)

Enjoy your weekend!

-Dave

A bit dreary but productive week.

As you have noticed the weather this week was a bit dreary.  We, however, had a  very sunny week in our room.  Students are being extremely engaged in our work and are deepening their understanding in all academic and social areas.

We have been investigating Vermont State Symbols. Along with this work we are also learning about different features found in non-fiction text.  Students have been working on books, we are using Google Slides for this work.  They have also practiced taking notes from resources, changing those notes into text, and finally choosing which words in this text to embolden and define in a glossary!

Another focus has been retelling and summarizing the books we are reading.  We have returned our focus to the difference between these two skills, and students are working on remembering that a retell is full of details and a summary is based on themes.

In math place value and digits have been our focus this week.  We have been looking at multiplication algorithms, like 243 X 10 = ____.  From this we have been figuring what the largest place value in the product will be, as well as the digit that will be in that place value.

Our discussions have also taken a turn, we have been working with Mrs. Christy to nurture discussion protocols with students, as well as to have students lead and choose the discussion protocols to use.  This happened this week!  Students chose texts to read, read and investigated them, met as a group, chose which protocol they thought would be most appropriate and finally used the protocol in a student directed manner!  This ownership of learning and engaged underlines the effort these students are putting into our discussion work.

As always, have a restful and relaxing weekend.

Dave