Talking Circle

A talking circle allows people to share their thoughts and ideas in a safe environment. We are very lucky to have Pam come and visit with us every day for three weeks to show us ways to use a talking circle and talking circle protocols.   We have been learning a lot!

Making Mental Images

This year, we have been learning that brains THINK when we are reading or listening to a story read aloud.  By wondering, making predictions and connections from the book to our life or even to another book, we better understand the story.

Today, we practiced a new comprehension technique called: "Making Mental Images."  When we listen carefully to the words in a story, the children are able to make a picture or movie in their mind using their powerful imaginations.  A story was read aloud and the illustrations were not shown.  Instead, the children drew what they imagined.  Soon, we will start listening to a chapter book and wonderful mental images will be created!

Seven Teachings

Our class will be learning about the Seven Sacred Teachings this year.  Each teaching helps children to learn how to live a good life and is partnered with an animal to represent the value.  We learned that the bison represents the teaching of respect.  We have read stories about respect and the children each wrote and illustrated one page of a classroom book about respect.  Each page tells how we can show respect in different places.  Here are a few examples:

Arabella wrote about showing respect at the dinner table:
Chew with your mouth closed. No playing at the table. No spilling at the table.

Tess wrote about showing respect in the lunchroom:
Do not go out of the lunchroom without permission. Be quiet. Clean up.

Lizzie wrote about showing respect on the playground:
No pushing. Go up the stairs. No Kicking. No yelling. Play politely. Don't go away from teachers. Play with everyone.

Matthew wrote about showing respect for your parent"
I will say, "Please pass the salt." I will clean up the living room. Listen to your mom. Be nice to your mom.

Different Kinds of Smart

Did you know that there are many ways to be smart?  

We are learning about the different kinds of smart (Gardner's Multiple Intelligences)!  Some of us are word smart or number smart, while others are music smart and body smart.  Some of us are people smart and some are self smart.  We can also be smart about art and smart about nature! 

 We know that everyone is smart and these are our smooth roads.  Our challenges are our bumpy roads and we have learned that with work and practice we can make our bumpy roads smoother!

  We made a class brain to show how smart we are in Room 8!  What kind of smart are you?

Buddies

This year, the students of Room 8 have wonderful older buddies from Rm 15.  Cross-age buddies promote respect, care, valuing differences, responsibility, friendship and including others.  Older students develop leadership skills and the younger students feel a safe and caring connection with an older child.  Our buddy time is scheduled every Day 5, period 8. We will engage in outdoor activities, literacy, art, technology and play.

After meeting our buddies for the first time, we went on an outdoor nature scavenger hunt.

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Fall Celebration

Yesterday we celebrated the first day of fall in connection with the science topic of "daily and seasonal changes". A word web was created to represent the children's knowledge of fall. Beautiful art was created, including leaf rubbings, leaf prints and spray paint leaf pictures. The children wrote fall poems and enjoyed an apple taste test. Finally, the students learned about the types of leaves. Happy fall!

Daily 5 - Read to Self

Today was our first day of Daily 5. We learned "Read to Self" today and practiced twice. Today we read for 3 minutes and we plan to get stronger every day and build our reading stamina. During Read to Self, we stay in one spot, read the whole time, get started right away, read quietly and keep our eyes on the book. Sometimes we read the words and other times we read the pictures. We are off to a wonderful start!