Today, we completed our first Pro Se Court. After reading about the homework debate, annotating for text evidence, and considering claims, students were randomly assigned roles as prosecutors, defense attorneys, or judges for the case. Ultimately, the panel of seven judges, in a 4-3 decision, concluded that homework is beneficial for children.
What a terrific first week of instruction. We learned a host of new routines, worked with new content, and started building our 3rd grade community. Given what we got done over the first five days, it is obvious we will accomplish a lot this school year.
I’ve made a number of changes to the classroom over the past two months with the goal of making the space as functional as possible for students.
A continued thank you to all the families who have donated to our DonorsChoose campaigns over the last decade. What this new class of students gets to use is the result of so many of you paying it forward.
One of the most exciting parts of our Classroom Economy is receiving donations. The number of contributions we have received so far has been impressive, and I am grateful that so many people are willing to support what happens in our classroom.
It is absolutely amazing what the students accomplished during distance learning and it culminated with a Toastmasters experience Thursday night. During the week the students practiced their speeches but also had time for work on biodiversity and adaptations, a virtual field day, and a baby picture quiz. (Thanks parents for sharing the photos.) The Toastmasters event was especially impressive and through Zoom, over 50 people were able to attend.
Ten weeks of distance learning was challenging but the students were great with it; and I am thankful that I got to experience it with this specific group of children and families.
The refrain of the classroom continues to be: learning, despite the distance. It is amazing what the kids continue to get done. We annotated for text evidence, divided with remainders, converted with different metric units, and we finished our animal reports. (We even did a peer edit via the Breakout Rooms in Zoom.) We also got to be part of a Greg Tang experience and participated in the live Mystery Science event.
This week we began our investigation into motion and matter. During the launch we explored two forces, magnetism and gravity, with a specific emphasis on the terms attract and repel.
Among the investigations was understanding how a magnetic field works. Students manipulated this phenomena with studies around magnets and paperclips. In the coming days, we will participate in an engineer design challenge.
Our last official classroom celebration for the 2019-2020 had students making Valentines boxes before sharing cards and gifts. Love all the variation, although the outcome/goal was the same for all.
Students brought in favorite wrapped board games for our holiday gift exchange. There were two twists. The first was that we incorporated the White Elephant idea in which games could be “stolen.” The second was that at the end of the exchange, students taught each other how to play the game they had shared for the exchange.
At the beginning of the week, I reminded the students that we would maximize our instructional time until our Holiday Celebration on Wednesday, at 2:30. That is exactly what they did. We covered a lot with explorations of unit fractions, adaptations, work on syntax, and fluency practice via Readers Theater. We gamified content with Quizizz and built background knowledge with Edpuzzle. We were productive and the kids covered important content. Oh yeah, we were also filmed.
Room 360 