Today students created holiday ornaments during their art lesson. Several different techniques were employed simultaneously and the final product looks great. Students will take these home next week to share.
Since returning from our Thanksgiving Break, we have taken a very close look at the personal narrative with an emphasis on point of view. Students can be pretty adept at identifying first person from third person point of view and even third person limited from third person omniscient. Understanding and analyzing how point of view impacts a story is an entirely different endeavor and this is why taking so much time with it.
Students are reading rich personal narratives and are also writing their own. They may have been asking about the history of their name and we will be turning what they learn into a graphic essay.
We were very fortunate in having the Sierra Watercolor Society visit our classroom and share their expertise with us. We engaged in careful observation of how watercolors work, learned more about the medium of watercolors and were instructed on specific techniques to take full advantage of the watercolor palette we worked with.
The finished product will serve as a terrific holiday gift. Moreover, there was no cost to the students or Roy Gomm. Instead, the four volunteers shared all the necessary supplies and a lot of their time.
The students started sharing their Google Slides presentations on Friday and we will continue to do this throughout next week. The presentations look great and showcase how “digital natives” can fluidly blend a traditional book report with 21st Century tools.
Many students already emailed their reports to parents and in some cases, to their classroom peers.
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.
Thank you parents for sharing such a great celebration with the kids!
Room 360 