Week 32 (April 20 - 24)

April 20 -24 (week 32)

"Intelligence plus character – that is the true goal of education "

Martin Luther King Jr.

Within room 604 we are still growing both our character and our intelligence. I’m not sure that either of these areas are something that can ever be mastered. Our classroom has 21 personalities that are continuously morphing. With so many different personalities the knowledge that can be shared is endless! My goal is always to encourage each child while helping them to inquire and gather their own intelligence. I’m amazed on the daily of how amazing our kids truly are and how each individual is growing into their own version of greatness! 

Sharing Our Knowledge

Sharing knowledge is one of the most humane and progressive things that one can do! We find every reason to share our knowledge in class. The kids love sharing knowledge from their writer’s notebook, their favorite book(s), or from their own experiences from home through our class journals. We’ve learned of so many new facts, cultural experiences, and insights during morning meeting as students share with the class! I can tell that our kids are having lots of time at home to explore and inquire and for that I’m grateful! You all are such wonderful parents!! 

Sharing Our Opinions

The zoo trip was a blast!! Thanks to our lovely chaperones (Ms. Palmer, Mrs. Simmons, and Ms. Carrero) we were able to have a great experience at the zoo! Our kids share a love for animals! As we began working on opinion pieces, we took time to look at two articles on zoos! Each article displayed a different viewpoint on the morality of zoos. The students eventually wrote their own pieces to share their opinion on zoos. We will be sharing these this coming week!

Sharing Knowledge at Recess

Our kids are some of the most helpful human beings I’ve encountered! They spend their recess showing each other how to improve their techniques on flipping, soccer, jump roping, and so many other things! I’m typically playing soccer or dodge ball at recess but occasionally I’ll walk around just to observe the kids and to of course to take pictures! It’s so amazing to watch the transfer of knowledge and teaching take place at recess. 

Week 31 (April 13-17)

April 13 – 17 (Week 31)

“Learn to be open minded and respectful to people’s opinions, even when you don’t agree!”

-Unknown

We’ve been talking a lot about fact and opinion lately! The conversation started when one of the kids stated matter-of-factly “teachers aren’t allowed to have tattoos” and another kid retorted with “yes they can because Ms. Tinsley has lots”! They were right, I do have tattoos but most are not visible. However the first student made a great point that we don’t typically think of teachers with tattoos, but this ignited a very important conversation around why we think that certain people should or shouldn’t have tattoos. This then led into what is considered a fact and what is considered an opinion and whose matters! This goes wonderfully with our standards on opinion writing! We will be working more with opinion writing in the upcoming weeks!

Science

We’ve begun our weather journey! We are slowly becoming young meteorologists! Each student has his or her own weather journal where they are recording the daily forecast and noting new weather terms, severe weather, and weather tools. The kids also had the opportunity to meet Dr. Doug and learn even more about weather. They found Dr. Doug very entertaining and learned some safety tips as well!

Time and Money

As we’ve studied time and money alongside one another, I’ve noticed that students are either grasping one or the other, but not both. This allows me to monitor and adjust my teaching! I believe that we will spend all of next week focusing on money and then the following week focus solely on time! The kids find both very fascinating and want to know more about each!

Sharing

I believe our favorite part of the day has become share time! Each day a student shares a read aloud with the class and another student shares a piece from his or her writer’s notebook! It’s amazing to watch the kids hop up on the stool and teach us through their writing or reading! The kids learn so much from their peers and it is such a beautiful experience to watch them muster up the courage to present their work to the class!

Speaking of reading, we had a few surprise readers in our class on Friday! Friday morning Mrs. Griggs came in to read Ivan: The Remarkable True Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla! As you all know, earlier this year we read the chapter book The One and Only Ivan. The kids were able to make so many connections between the two books! It was such an amazing experience to watch and the kids always love surprise visits from Mrs. Griggs. Also Ms. Junor spent some time with us after recess and read a chapter from our newest read aloud Stella by Starlight! She is such an animated reader. She had the kids hanging on to her every word. I can’t wait to see what surprise readers we have next!