Today we completed an Hour of Code and joined millions of other students in promoting Computer Science outcomes. This was certainly not our first work with coding. In fact, we have taken our understanding of block coding and applied it to our Kanos and Spheros. This was unique because it allowed us to part of something bigger. It was a chance to share an experience with millions of students across the country and the world.

The students completed their first week of 3rd grade and I also completed my first week of 3rd grade. It’s been great!

We established important routines and procedures, engaged in a few icebreakers, and reserved a great deal of time to get started with our content. We read from the Wind and the Willows, built number bonds and arrays, studied magnetism, did some word study, and learned our first annotation symbols.

It’s been an amazing start.

We finished the year with a burst. We completed our study of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Nights Dream, a full unit on sound, multiple opportunities to identify claims, evidence and reasoning in informational text and the elements of plot in narrative (exposition, rising action, climax, and falling action.) We “stepped-up” to sixth grade with mini investigations of negative integers, area of parallelograms and right triangles, and finding rate. We also moved through several inquiry activities including Youcubed.org in which we learned about conjectures.  In other words, we ended the year the way we started it, by working hard.

We had a great trip to the Capital. We are all enormously thankful for the hard work of the volunteers and their attention to making sure the visit was engaging and thorough.

We’ve been rehearsing lines and we discussed iambic pentameter. Today was a chance to move through Act 1, Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Despite all of the challenges, the kids persisted with the tasks and were able to identify the exposition, rising action and conflict in what we read.