After paying rent, we had our second auction of the school year. It continues to impress me that international companies are so generous with our community. Although they don’t know me, and in most cases have no ties to Reno, they see value in promoting financial literacy in our elementary school classrooms.
Although we are unable to do it as frequently as I like, we did fit in another Author’s Chair this morning. Author’s Chair is a chance for students to share a completed work and hear feedback from their classmates. Some students wrote a text-based response to Cisneros’ Eleven, others about compromising who we are to maintain friendships, and some following a lesson and the mentor text Dog Breath.
Today we concluded our Pro/Con readings on recycling and divided ourselves into partners for our Structured Academic Controversy. We started the work last week when students annotated articles on recycling and identified a “super claim.” This was followed by students sharing the evidence they found and then today we divided ourselves into partners and randomly were assigned a position in favor or against our super claim.
With facilitation from NevadaTeach, students learned more about isopods and hypothesized about the conditions isopods would most prefer living in. The University of Nevada Reno students did a great job leading the students through an experiment to verify and refine their understandings.
We started the week reading about the pros and cons of recycling to get ready for our next Structured Academic Controversy (SAC). We continue to use this method so that students develop perspective taking and civic responsibility.
We are also using text annotating to go with our reading. This will help facilitate the process of making claims supported by evidence.
Room 360 