text + reader = idea

At the end of last week, we looked at ideas we'd collected from Rules, our read aloud, and decided which ones we'd hold onto to discuss later.  The work was to evaluate which ideas were big enough to hold onto, or to identify which ideas would lead to rich conversations later.  Many of the ideas we decided to keep felt similar.  Yesterday, students grouped those similar-feeling ideas together.  Today's work was to make one strong statement that ties together each group of statements from yesterday.  Before students could do that on their own, we had a meeting about how to make a strong statement.  We looked at four ideas students had about The Circuit, a short story I read aloud a few weeks ago:

• The family was poor.
• The family was being used because they were working really hard, but they didn't get paid a lot of money.
• Every time Panchito gets used to where he is, he has to move.
• The family had to break the law because they needed more money.

Then, the students identified the second statement as the strongest.  We talked about what made it strong, and concluded that it's strong because it has the reader's opinion or judgement in it.  Our goal is to make statements that are text + reader = idea, not just text = idea.

Before students applied this thinking to their sorted ideas about Rules, we practiced as a whole class by revising our thoughts about The Circuit.  Here's what we came up with. Revisions are in purple:

• The family was poor.  It's not fair that their lives are being controlled by money.
• The family was being used because they were working really hard, but they didn't get paid a lot of money.  That's a bad thing.  They're not being paid fairly.
• Every time Panchito gets used to where he is, he has to move.  Panchito can't be like a real kid--that must be hard!  I would feel really frustrated.
• The family had to break the law because they needed more money.  They needed to break the law to survive, but it's still not okay (or is it?).

Students are still working on their strong statements about Rules.  Stand by for those!

Have a lovely Thanksgiving if you're celebrating!  Happy long weekend to all.

Reading Portraits

Happy Saturday!

We finished our reading self portraits last week!  They are glorious.  Over the last month, students have been collecting information about their reading lives, analyzing the information and synthesizing the information into a map of their reading brains that tells the story of who they are as readers.  They looked at favorite books, excerpts, characters, settings, authors, series, you name it--and then they thought about what all those favorites told them about themselves.  We read to affirm what we  believe.  We read because it changes our minds and moves us forward.  We read because it makes us want to change ourselves and the world.  That is the work of these portraits--to put students in touch with those ideas, and to give them a chance to see for themselves the connection between their identities and their reading lives.

Reading Portraits

Enjoy!

Thoughts about Rules by Cynthia Lord: Keep or Kill?

This week in school, we started a new read aloud: Rules, by Cynthia Lord. Over the course of the week, I collected students' thoughts about the book. Today, we looked at all the thoughts from this week and decided which ones we'd keep and which ones we'd "kill." The decision was based on whether or not the idea felt like something that would lead to a good discussion. If it was something that felt more like a fact from the book or a small idea that wouldn't lead to much conversation, we "killed" the idea. Check out our list of thoughts and see what we kept and what we killed. (If we were on the fence about keep it or kill it, we kept it just to be safe.)

Too Cute to Resist

Here we are, working on 10,000 Charts.
:)

10,000 Charts/Cuteness

Self Portraits

Hi Everybody,


As the class was lining up for science today, Sascha L. asked me, "Has our classroom ever been this messy, other than when we did clay sculptures or the mural?"  No, it has not.  Let me tell you, though, it's a beautiful mess!  Our room is positively covered with books, papers, markers, colored pencils, Post-It Notes, tape and more books.  It's glorious!


Last week, students brought in a pile of their favorite things to read.  They marked favorite excerpts, brainstormed their favorite characters, authors and settings, and thought about why they like the things they like.  Today, they began to synthesize all of that work into a reading reaction where they are the text.  Their work is to look across everything they collected and think about what it tells them about themselves as a reader, which will ultimately tell them about themselves in general.  They're analyzing data.


The reaction itself is a way for students to process, not present their thoughts.  As they begin to build their reading brains on paper, connections and new ideas appear, and they get recorded, too.  Halfway through their work today, I asked how many people felt like they'd discovered something new about themselves, and nearly every hand went up.  We're in the middle of a beautiful, messy process!  Check it out:

Self Portraits

Camping!

Drop Box

Why do People Write?

Here are some notes from one of our first conversations about writing.

Why do people write?

It’s fun!

To entertain

To express themselves

To remember/to remind

To share ideas, experiences, and memories

To share knowledge/info/thoughts/emotions/feelings

To let people know what’s going on

So others can experience what the writer did

To make $

To share life lessons

To warn someone

To create something new

To communicate

To inspire

To calm yourself

To process or figure something out, to think

To make people think

To learn

To convince

To help others

So as a writer, what do you want your reader to experience, regardless of your genre choice?  We want them...

To understand (understand=topic)

To get pulled in

To feel like they’re actually there

To feel what you hoped they would feel

To understand or feel your purpose (feel=purpose)

To think about the message

How the heck do we do that?!

Pick things that are personal to you.

Think about what’s happening now…write about what’s relevant to your readers.

Write from your heart.

What's in that heart?

You!

What you care about

Memories

Emotion

Too Pretty to do Homework?

Hi all,


I can't help myself from sharing this with you.  Forever 21 and JCPenny recently put shirts on their shelves that say "Allergic to Algebra" and "I'm too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me."  This is abhorrent!  They've since pulled the shirts, but I still think this petition is worth signing.  We will talk about this at school on Monday.


Take care,


Lauren

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!)?

Field Day!

Field Day was a blast!  Thanks to Erica and Tina for orchestrating water and popsicles, thanks to all who attended, and thanks to Rob Gross for letting me school him at runners and pullers (Rob, I never would have guessed that pirouetting across the field would be your strategy of choice).  Thanks, too, to my glorious students for being so much fun!  Lots of pictures after the jump.

Runners & Pullers

I love that parents played--look at that form (although I don't think these are our dads)!

The California Frog-Jumping Contest: Frog Jumping

Today, we started working on a math situation that will keep us busy for a few days.  The problem is based on a frog jumping contest that takes place annually in Calaveras County in California.  Frogs are lined up on a starting line, and then they jump.  The frog with the longest jump is the winner.  The problem is that frogs generally take a few jumps and then a few steps, which makes it difficult to figure out how long one of the jumps was.  To address this issue, we have the referee's frog-jumping rule: Whenever a frog jumps in an event, if the frog takes more than one jump, all jumps are assumed to be equal in length and all steps are assumed to be equal in length.  This is an algebra exploration--more on that later.  Here's how we began:

Multiplication Dice Roll

Hi!  This is Alexa and Janeva.  We are math partners.  We invented this game called Multiplication Dice Roll.  This is a good game to play because it can help you with your multiplication facts and it can also challenge you to multiply bigger numbers mentally.  There are three levels of the game: easy, medium and hard.  Easy is played with 3 dice, medium is played with 4 or 5 dice, and hard is played with 6 dice.  The rules for each level are the same. It can be competitive or not.


The Rules


1. Player 1 (there can be anywhere between 1 and 4 players) rolls all of the dice.


2. The player who rolled multiplies the numbers rolled, then it's the next person's turn.


3. If you want to play competitively, the player with highest product in each round scores a point.  Whoever has the most points wins.


Here's an example from a medium game:

6 x 6 x 4 x 1 = 144

We hope you enjoy this game we created!

Sincerely,

Alexa & Janeva

The ELA is...

After the ELA today, we sat in a circle and each student said two, three or four words to add on to our thoughts about the ELA.  Here's the result:

The ELA is gone.  I feel good.  The ELA was very frightening for some, and there were weird stories in there.  They were cheesy.  We were relieved when it was over.  I sorta hated it because there were boring stories in it.  Now that it's done, it should burn in the underworld.  Yay, it's gone!  Hip hip hooray!  It was very fair.  I'm glad it's over for good.  Murdering the sign was fun, especially when we punched it.  It won't be missed.  It's over, hooray!

("Murdering the sign" refers to the "Testing: Do Not Enter" sign that gets posted on our door while we're testing each day.  Since today was the last day, we passed it around the circle and each student tore a piece off.  We then beat the pieces up for 10 seconds, and then we forgave the ELA.  As an act of closure, each student ceremoniously put his or her piece of the sign into the recycle bin.  It was beautiful.)

Day 1 is Over!

We are alive and well!  Happy, even.  Today's test was totally fair, and the only thing that was unexpected was that it did NOT include one of those absurd questions that makes my head explode.  Let's hear from the test-takers themselves:

"It was annoying, but it was really easy.  Aced it!" Max

"I thought about it as test prep, and it made it easy.  I felt relaxed." Rose

"The test was okay, but I know it was for a good reason.  I feel like I did great." Chris

"I hate the test, but it was easy!" Sasha A.

"It was really easy, kind of like a practice test." Darien

"It was boring, but it was really easy.  I felt fine because it was easy." Eleanor

"I was nervous my last test, but for this test I felt better.  I had more experience this time.  I think test prep really helped me get ready for the test, too." Alexa

"I felt relaxed and thought of what my mom told me this morning--'You control the test.  Don't let the test control you.'  I must admit, test prep was pretty annoying, but it came in handy." Sascha L.

"I felt pretty good and confident about taking the test.  Test prep really helped me." Scott

After the test, we had a nice long snack and then took a stroll in the park.  Here we are, all piled up outside of school:

Penny Jar Situations

In math, we've been studying constant rate of change (grown up language only) by thinking about penny jar situations.  A penny jar situation might sound like this: I start with 4 pennies in a jar.  Each round, I add 5 more pennies to the jar, so after round 1, there are 9 pennies in the jar, and after round 2, there are 14 pennies in the jar.  We've been talking about how you can figure out how many pennies are in the jar after any round without having to know how many pennies were in the jar in the previous rounds.  There are a bunch of ways to think about this.  For example, Charlie noticed, 

"If you know the 5th round and want to know what the 8th round is, you have to find out how much is in there, or how much rounds is in between the 5th and 8th rounds.  I add the number you're supposed to add (5, in this situation) three times.  I add three times because that's what's in between five and eight."

Here's Charlie's explanation of his work for the penny jar situation start with 4, add 5:

Poetry Study

Welcome back!   I hope everyone had a lovely break.

We began studying poetry in writing this week!  We've read lots of poems and made observations about the writing.  We've also do some writing of our own, inspired by the good writing we notice in our mentor poems.  The focus question is, "What can this poem teach us about writing poetry?"  To get the ball rolling, we notice what we like about each poem and try to name it.  Here are the notes from Monday's conversation about Foul Shot by Edwin A. Hoey.  The Notes in color coordinate with a mark in the poem itself, and the notes in black stand alone.

Maya Study Celebration

Save the date!

Our Maya Study Celebration will be Friday, February 18^th from 8:50-9:30.  We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

Missing Winter Gear

Hey Team,


We have a missing mitten (black with white trim and the word "Auclair" on it) and a missing black headband.  Can everyone please take a look in their backpacks tonight to make sure you didn't accidentally mittennap or headbandnap those things?


Thanks!


LEB

AMNH

Well families, 9,738 cups of tea later, I'm glad to proclaim that I'm finished writing reports (hence the hush that fell over the blog).  They'll go home on February 3rd.  Here are some photos from our trip to the Museum of Natural History.  I'll post updates from school as usual, but I'm also taking requests.  If there's something you'd like to see on the blog, please either post a comment or send me an email.  The pictures are after the jump.