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| High School students did a great job teaching students math via playful experiences yesterday. |
What's on the agenda?
October find us digging into the standards with multiple learning opportunities and a focus on each child's individual needs, strengths, and interests.
Our studies will find us doing the following:
Environmental Education
Students will continue to add illustrations, reflections, and information to their science journals. In the next week, we'll make those journals a mainstay of quiet reading/writing work as children continue to learn about the world around them with a science lens. I want to collect those journals and review their work to date. I also want to give students badges for the big accomplishments in science learning such as specific field studies, hands-on projects, student advocacy efforts, and STEAM endeavors.
Physical Science
Soon I'll review our physical science curriculum, shore up a number of learning experiences, and rearrange materials in cabinets to support that study. Students love the hands-on learning related to our physical science curriculum--the challenge is to well organize materials and learning experiences to support this enjoyable and meaningful learning.
Math Education
The weekly math learning routine is taking shape including a weekly home study packet, weekly at-home online skills practice, an in-class or out-of-class learning menu, early morning extra help sessions, and daily learning experiences that introduce new concepts, skills, and knowledge in a variety of ways. Students already took a start-of-school assessment and now we're working towards our first official grade-level unit assessment. The greatest challenge with math education is finding the time to help every child learn with the support they need and profit from, and I'll continue to work to find ways to do that in the days ahead.
Read Aloud
We're midway into our book about the King Phillip's War which is a part of the new social studies standards. Students are enjoying the book, and I need to devote good time to that story before our upcoming colonial period field study.
Colonial Period Education
My colleagues are mainly teaching this unit with lots of related reading and writing. We've woven some of this education into our local science studies, field studies, math, and read aloud. I'll try to embed a bit more social studies education via math by helping students to frame their understanding of this period by looking at and working with important dates and numbers related to the period.
Timeline Project
Our tech teacher is working with students to complete their past-present-future timelines as a way of helping them to develop the social studies lens that the past does affect the present and future in many ways. This project also provides students with an opportunity to learn about each other and build community. We will post these projects in the hallways for students to refer to throughout the year.
Social Emotional Learning
While I hoped to engage in more teamwork efforts at the start of the year, the push to begin curriculum work was great. Yet students' are demonstrating a need for greater, explicit teamwork learning and practice so I'll make time for this in the days ahead with a number of explicit lessons and teamwork experiences.
Classroom
Once again the classroom is in need of a bit of renovation--new learning and materials have created a need to reorganize materials. I'll do a bit of that at the end of the day today and in the weeks ahead to get ready for the collaborative science/math activities ahead.
It's been a positive start to the school year with a great team, enthusiastic students, helpful family members, and good resources to teach well. Onward.