In Room 102 this week we learned about and we have promised to honour “The Four Agreements”. Students are expected to be responsible for their own behaviour, model good choices and to help others follow the agreements.
When they do, students: § feel included and appreciated by peers and teachers § are respected for their differences § are actively involved in their own learning § have positive expectations from others that they will succeed Please review Mutual Respect, Listening, Appreciations (No Put Downs!) and Participation with your child at home. Once you’ve reviewed this booklet please return it to school so that students can refer to it when needed. For more information visit: Tribes As positive reinforcement, students will earn collective “gems” when they follow the four agreements as a group. For example, if we’re walking down the hallways quietly, respecting the others in the building that are learning and working, we will earn a gem. After a read aloud, if all the students showed good listening, we’ll earn a gem. If we have a Scientist come to do a workshop, and we show appreciation for our visitor by using polite manners, we’ll earn a gem. And if we all follow the steps in a new activity and try something together, we’ll earn a gem. Once all the gems have been earned, we’ll celebrate our good choices by having a ‘gem party’! Students will also be recognized for making good choices individually too. We read Have You Filled a Bucket Today? If someone picks up pencils and erasers off the ground to put them where they belong, if they model good listening on the carpet by putting one finger to their lips and the other hand high in the air, if they say excuse me to a classmate in the closet when they’re trying to get at their backpack or if they take a risk and join in an activity that’s new to them, a student can earn a ‘droplet’ to be put in our classroom bucket. Now Kendra and I won’t always get the chance to see students making their good choices, so they won’t always get a droplet, but we hope that they’ll continue to make good choices because when they do, they not only make someone else happy (and fill their bucket) they too can feel a sense of pride and happiness for making a good choice. Every once in a while, we’ll draw droplets from the bin and those students will get to choose their centre first, choose the picture book to read aloud, get 5 minutes of extra computer time, or maybe they’ll even get a sticker or a pencil to take home ;) As an extension activity, Kendra played a game called “All the Good in the World” where students had to share ‘good thought’ that filled their buckets. Some said food, water, home, family and others shared about fun, cats, and dogs! The first person started with a ball of yarn, then passed to the next to share their thought. In the end, we had one amazing web of ‘All the Good in the World” to see! In math, we’ve continued to talk about the number of the day and how it can be ‘made’ (composed and decomposed). Students use snap cubes to help them visualize different ways to make their number. For example a train of 8 cubes could be snapped into 1 and 7, 2 and 6, 3 and 5, 4 and 4, so students could them use those groups as visual aids when drawing squares, circles and stars in their number sense book. We emphasize drawing clear and neat, organized groups – not just big long lines, because those can be hard to count! Students should be starting to recognize and using groups of numbers; for example, 4 corners with 1 in the middle is 5 (like on a die). Another way we’ve been showing our number of the day has been on a Ten Frame (two block rows of five). Students showed the number 8 as the top row being full (5) and three more blocks coloured in on the bottom. Concentration: *Choose Levels 1-10 and the 'open windows' version. By yourself or against a friend, match whole numbers and shapes to equivalent representations. Practice with the clear panes or step up the challenge with the windows closed. How many socks can you win? Ten Frame: Thinking about numbers using frames of 10 can be a helpful way to learn basic number facts. The four games that can be played with this applet help to develop counting and addition skills. Whenever we have time before a transition, students have loved playing with our ‘dot plates’! I hold up a dot plate, quickly, and students are supposed to ‘see’ the number instead of ‘counting (by ones)’ the number; for example (like on a die) a group of 5 is next to a group of 3, rather than start at 1, students should ‘see’ the groups and count on “I know that’s a group of 5 and I saw 3 more, so it’s 5 – 6, 7, 8!” Make some of your own dot plates at home with stickers, markers, or bingo dabbers! Goggle ‘dot plates’ and you’ll get LOTS of ideas J Take a look at this site: Ten Frames and Dot Plates Info
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In our Room 108 Classroom Community, we foster an engaging, respectful and caring environment. I aim to balance a consistent program with flexible responsiveness to students' individual needs. Archives
November 2017
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