Sunday, November 9, 2014

Voting, Interviews, Observational Drawings, and MORE!

Good evening,

Welcome back to another jam-packed week, filled with so much valuable learning moments, challenges, and experiences.  I am so lucky to be able to work with these thoughtful friends each day and learn so much alongside them.  Enjoy this peek into their adventures.  I look forward to reading your thoughts and impressions in the comments.  What was a valuable learning moment for your child this week?

Check out friends working to decode different instruction manuals, following a step by step guide to complete their task. 



































This week, the last half of our classmates cycled through testing the watercolors and brushes during Relax and Reading time.  Check out some of their results below and come on in for a closer look!







This week, the Kindergarten Friends helped me sort through the Story Element Brainstorms we generated with our 7th Grade Buddies and voted on during last week's Gallery Walk.  We organized them by the number of votes and found which ideas had the most stickers on them. 





When we met with our Buddies this week, the final choices that needed to be narrowed down were voted on.  Each partnership came in one by one to do a secret ballot vote and then enjoyed each other's company on the playground.  Here are some snapshots.





























Our class have continued their Food Drive donation collection and had been noticing more items were coming in.  The class worked together to count and organize how many cans we had collected so far.  They are determined to bring in more boxed and canned goods, keeping track of the additions on a list.  Thank you for supporting them in their efforts!












Thank you to Betsy (Eli's mom) for being our Family Reader this week.



Our class generated several interview questions for our expert, Megan Thomason, who came in to share with us her experience as a published, best-selling and award winning author.  See our Discussion Notes Binder for her responses to these questions.







During Open Choice Time, a lot of hard work has been coming along.  Our Thank You Messages for everyone who helped on our field trip and Fall Season Celebration are near completion!






Friends have been working to incorporate friend's suggestions on how to improve the functionality of our games from the Fall Season Celebration.  



Our Symmetrical Pattern Creations have been transferred on to paper and different friends have been trying to find the line of symmetry in these pieces of work and documenting how many of each shape are present.  This has been tricky for some, so friends are coming up with different strategies to keep track of their work without getting mixed up in which number comes next.



Have you been watching our Passion Fruit Vine outside of our class bare fruit throughout these past few months?  Well, we have our first ripened fruit in our possession!  This week, we have started documenting what we observe in the appearance of it's shape.  Here are some first observational drawings.  Notice the attention to the nooks and crannies seen on the shell, based on each person's different perspective.




Speaking of observational drawings, we now have a beautiful collection of squashes and gourds in our class!  Friends spent time doing careful drawings, trying to match the lines that they see in the fruit.  Here are some of their first tries.  They will be practicing giving a receiving feedback from peers to make changes to their work to help it become more clear.









Our Dramatic Play Area continues to be a backdrop for the reenactment for the stroy of The Shoemaker and the Elves, however, friends have found it difficult to bring this story for life.  Making the costumes and props do not seem to be the problem...




One group of friends brought their experience to Revisiting Meeting to get some suggestions on how to make the work in this area happen more efficiently in terms of keeping track of what part of the story people are supposed to do next, since looking through the book was too time consuming for them.


A suggestion brought to them from the group was to find different parts of the story to act out in the book, photocopy them in the office, and friends can reference their images posted on the wall to remind themselves quickly what to do next.  During Open Choice Time, different helpers worked together agree which pages were essential to highlight.


Friends are finding more and more rhyming words using different consonant endings.  Check out some examples from this week and check out the rest in class!  Which words can you come up with?












Here go some examples of one of our Number Talks this week.  We are coming up with MORE unique equations for our sums of 5 and 6.  Check out the rest on our Number Talks Wall.




As a class, we went on a Walk and Talk to our school's garden.  Students were excited to see different vegetables growing in the planter boxes and were curious about what might be planted in the empty ones.  












I want to appreciate everyone for helping their children work on what inspires them, at home.  It's getting hard to keep up with all of the Learning Extensions that are coming in each day, but we are happy to learn from each other, becoming inspired each week.  We learned about how jelly beans are made, what professionals do at Trade Shows, what the different parts of a clock mean, facts about giraffes, pumpkins, the life cycle of butterflies, balance and symmetry when using Kinex, ant colony social class structures, how animals have different names as adults than as when they are young, sorting and sifting coins, letter symbol writing practice, shape drawing practice, equation writing, party planning, public service announcements about how we can harm and help the ecosystems, cooking, care package making for the less fortunate, building a community garden, home-made Number Talks and equation writing, story book making, and paint mixing.  Goodness!!  I think the children alone have covered all of the major core subjects that people study in on a regular basis!  Keep it coming, guys!  We are learning so much!  Thank you for your patience with the Home To School Learning Extensions Wall, as I mentioned before, it's been hard to keep up, I love it!






















Did you know, that at the end of each week, we do a Special Goodbye Circle?  Since we won't be seeing each other over the home days, each friends gets a chance at giving and receiving a special goodbye whispered into their ear.  We look forward to this each week, it's really a lovely, quiet moment.



Welcome to our newest friend, Mahea!  We look forward to learning from you.


Wow!  Thank you for reading this WHOLE post!  Have a great week and see you next time!
Love, Gaby

5 comments:

  1. Jackson says, "I love you, Gaby. I had fun doing my homework share last week. I hope you have a good day with us." Thanks for the very thorough report-out! - Jennifer

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    1. Jackson, thank you for your kind comments. I look forward to reading them each week! Thank you for inspiring so many of us to think about different strategies to make your creation stand on it's own!
      Love, Gaby

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  2. Emma liked the voting and was very excited about the observational drawing and watercolor painting. What a great idea it was to have an interview with a published author! The visit to the garden has definitely opened up her up to vegetables. Thanks documenting everything!

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    1. I'm glad the trip to the garden impacted her in such a healthy way!

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  3. Eli has really enjoyed Lego Physics. At home, he has gotten more creative with his Lego creations, and he has learned so much about the names of the pieces and how they work together. We love looking at the HTSLE wall and learning from all of the friends.

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