K-Buddies

Here are some photos from our first day with our kindergarten buddies!  The students' job was to show them the ropes in the cafeteria and yard.  It's unbelievably sweet to watch the very cool fifth graders warm up to the tiny kindergartners!

September 14, 2011

The First Days of School

We had a wonderful first two days back!  You'll find a few photos below.  You'll see us trying to determine the area of our newly painted cork board, playing Bowl-A-Fact, and building newspaper towers.  Building newspaper towers is a team building activity students do to help them think about what makes a group work well.  Each group of 3 was given some newspaper and a roll of masking tape, and the challenge is to build a tower at least as tall as the tallest member of the group using only those materials.  After the building was complete, we had a conversation about what makes a group work well.  In their words:

• Instead of one person doing the work, everybody pitches in and contributes ideas.
• Listen to other people.
• Everybody does some work.
• Combine everybody's ideas.
• Have fun with it--don't be mad if it's not going well.
• Know when it's time to take a step back.
• You don't have to agree, but you have to be agreeable (Don't act in a bad way.).
• Make formal or informal jobs for everyone--assign based on talents.
• You have to be positive, even if you don't like something.
• You have to communicate.  You have to listen and talk, and you have to use a nice tone.

At the end of the discussion, I asked them to distill the ideas about group work into keywords:

Conversations about September 11th

Dear Fifth Grade Families,

During these first couple days of school, each class had conversations about September 11th. We framed our conversations around the idea of community, and the students learned the story of what life was like at P.S. 234 and in our temporary homes after 9/11. We also talked about the outpouring of love and support we received from the world community. Our conversation also focused on the fact that the adults in our community made sure the children here were safe.

We watched an episode of “Reading Rainbow” that was filmed at P.S. 234. The episode was about how the TriBeCa community pulled together and began to heal, and also served as a way for the students at 234 to say thank you to all of the people who sent gifts, supplies and well wishes to the school during that difficult time.

There was much curiosity in our classrooms about September 11th. Students had questions about the event itself and expressed a lot of feelings about how important it is to come together as a community during a scary time to help each other feel better. As this topic is fresh in the minds of your children, we encourage you to continue this conversation at home. If you have any questions, please feel free to email us.

Thank you,

Arielle, Ed, Lauren & Sharon

School Supplies

Hi everybody!


I hope you're all enjoying a wonderful summer!  You'll be getting a letter from Lisa in the next week or two full of all kinds of back to school information, including where to find school supply lists.  Ours is in the links section of the blog.  Thanks for shopping, and I look forward to seeing you a month from today!


Love,


Lauren

The Last Day of 4th Grade

Dear Families,

Thank you for the amazing outpouring of love (and flora!) at the end of the day!  I was literally bowled over by all of the hugs, flowers, porcelain, blueberries and Lego Nils that came my way.  I adore all of you, and am looking forward to a very happy return in September!  Happy summers all around!

Love,

Lauren

The Invention of Hugo Cabret: Why Prometheus?

We're reading The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick for our final read aloud (http://www.theinventionofhugocabret.com/index.htm).  There are a few references to Prometheus in the book, and today we had a conversation about why, given all of the various mythological characters there are, Selznick might have invited Prometheus into his novel.  One of the Common Core Standards (which are, for the most part, exquisite) is that students will, "Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone."  In fourth grade, that means students will, "Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including those that allude to significant characters found in mythology (e.g. Herculean).  These are the notes I took during the conversation about Selznick's choice:

The California Frog Jumping Contest:Three Frogs

Check these problems out--this is what we're up to today.  Can you see the algebra connection?  And can you solve these problems without relying on it (Don't be a math robot!)?