Learning to Serve

Our Second Trip to the Early Childhood Center

We are learning and using many 21st Century Skills when we collaborate with our preschool buddies.

On this second meeting, we decided as a crew to write a story with our buddies.  

We needed to think about what we could learn and what our buddies could learn...so we wrote Learning Targets that we thought we could achieve.

 When we got back, we shared our experiences and realized our Learning Targets for the story writing with our preschoolers were a bit too lofty!  

Now that we are beginning to trust each other, deeper relationships are developing.  So sweet!

And it is ok to play...using our imagination helps us predict and compose while reading and writing.

Climbing in Castlewood Canyon Spring 2014

What JOY it was to watch each of my children challenge themselves on this Voyage.  They put Mr. Doug's great climbing instruction into practice for the first time in the great outdoors.  Everyone climbed and used the mantra, 
"I can do it!"  And they did.  They have grown so much!

Hopeful Green Thumbs

In our current Expedition study we have been looking at the reciprocity between worms and soil.  We also plan to take a close look at soil samples in our area.  Somehow, this has all led to planting a few things in the REMS garden!  Of course we will be adding our worms to enrich the soil and we know why! (if you don't, ask your first grader)

We plan to have some expert gardeners come to speak to us about preparing the soil and other important gardening tips.  Below you can see that we planted our seeds in a seed starter kit.  The mini greenhouse is going to be lots of fun to watch.  Wish us luck!

Math Across our Day

When a teachable moment comes up in our day, I run with it.  While reading about worms, we came to a page showing a 100 ft. ribbon snake that sits on the ocean floor.

My mind jumped to math!  I wanted to give the a visual of how long this would be.  We figured out that the average child in our crew was about 4 ft. long.  I laid the kids out on the floor, end to end.  You can see the video of this here!

Then we figured out the math.  I wrote down the 4's and said nothing more than "doubles?"  This got them thinking and we then turned the 4's into 8's.

Then we added the 8's to get 16's. Then the 16's to get 32's.  Finally we added the final two numbers with the help of the 100 grid.

We were excited to see that our "crew snake" was about as long as a ribbon snake.  We were amazed!

Spring Climbing 2014

Collaborating with Preschoolers

So many great things happened on our first fieldwork with our new buddies over at the preschool.  It warmed my heart to see them reading books side by side.  I watched them collaborating as they gently led their preschooler from center to center and often is was the preschooler leading my children! My first graders learned what it is like to be a teacher!  A new found respect for Ms. Mary Beth, if even for just one day!

A Whole Lot of Reading Going On

The children have come so far as readers! My heart is bursting with joy as I watch each of them take off!  We are learning that reading happens across the curriculum. Here one group is collaborating on their expert text article about worms in Expedition. 

I

We are doing such great things in Reader's Workshop and Guided Reading, too many for me to write about here, but this chart  is something to be thinking about and asking me about at Listening conferences.

Every day we use these thinking tools as we interact with the chapter book I'm reading, Anna Hibiscus, or in a guided reading group led by me.  I'd love to share this with you when we meet.  I know this is hard to read but you can check it out when you are in the room and we can chat about it.

Please ask your children about the chapter book I'm reading to them about a little girl who lives in Africa.  We are learning  some new African vocabulary words.  One way I'm teaching this is to "read around the word" to get context clues about what the word could mean.  Sometimes we have to search on google.  We decided to write to the author, Atinuke, about the meaning of a bubba and a wrappa.  We went to her blog page and are waiting for a response.