Stronger and Clearer Each Time

We were visited by Dr. Amy Salgo who introduced the students to Stronger and Clearer Each Time. The instructional approach was developed by the Understanding Language Project at Stanford University and has students engage in multiple rehearsals of a problem or question before coming to a final answer.

Dr. Salgo asked the students if fractions are numbers and the students ultimately arrived at the conclusion, yes!

FractionWW

Fishbowl: Service Animals

We used a sample Smarter Balanced Test item to get ready for a persuasive essay on service animals. We read through three texts, annotated for evidence and then rehearsed for our writing using a Fishbowl.

In a Fishbowl, students sit in a circle with several students in the middle. Participants share ideas around a topic and if someone in the middle needs help or has run out of ideas, they will replace themselves with someone from the outside.

Cowriting and Sharing Persuasive Letters

The students spent part of the last two days sharing persuasive essays. Following the model in the children’s book I Wanna Iguana, students wrote back and forth to each other in their “Writing Coaches” corresponding journals. The writing was terrific and students stuck to our model of Claim-Evidence-Reasoning-Closure.

Students wrote from the perspective of pillows, tennis balls, favorite pets, celebrities, and family members.

Blending Our Learning with Google Classroom

This week we leveraged many of the elements of Google Classroom including building presentations for our Great American Day, taking a quiz with Google Forms, reviewing geography with http://www.earth-picker.com/ and Google Maps, and sharing data via Google Sheets. Taken together, we were able to blend our learning and reach outcomes not possible just a few years ago.

 

Valentines Day 2018, The Learning Part

We continued our exploration of chemistry by looking closely at how things can be put together and taken apart. Further, we worked with creating a solution and then discovering the saturation point. Students are building a important bank of understanding around dissolving, evaporation, saturation, mixture and solution.

We’re Back and we were Busy

Although it was just a four day week, and student hadn’t been in school for 23 consecutive days, we got a lot done! We learned to multiply decimals and relate this to our understanding of fractions. We studied surrealism, sensory details, and word play as we moved further into the Phantom Tollbooth. We wrote with an emphasis on tone. We did a close read as we started our work with We the People. And we began a Doodles Academy Project.