Category: MindUp!

Weeks Two and Three

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We started talking about what will be happening around the classroom during one of the most important hours of our day this week: small group reading rotation hour.  During this time, I will be meeting with a small group of students to instruct and enrich their particular needs.  While I am doing that, your children will be either completing an activity on the computer, working on a writing assignment/choice, or reading to themselves.  To prepare them for these independent stations, we spend all of September, and some of October practicing those stations.  This practice time helps to build creative problem-solving skills, cooperation, and collaboration because (as the below poster describes) they cannot talk to me unless four very specific things happen in our classroom:

Here we are building reading stamina!

    
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We learned how to generate our own survey questions, then conduct an unbiased survey (the best we could), and create a pictograph and a bar graph using our survey results.  I am so impressed with how well they handled these activities!

      

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We’ve continued our study of growth mindset, but we’ve also added in learning about three parts of our brain: the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the prefrontal cortex.  MindUp teaches us that we have to learn strategies to control the amygdala, otherwise we will fight, run away, or freeze when it senses danger – even if there’s no actual danger!  We’ve differentiated mindful versus unmindful behaviors, talked about listening mindfully, and started our “core practice” of deep belly breathing.  Ask your child to teach you the appropriate way to breathe tonight!

                 

This week was also our first garden lesson where we got to help weed, enrich the soil, and scatter plant lettuce that we’ll get to enjoy when the colder months come around!  Check us out in action!

      

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Overall, another fantastic two weeks.  Keep it coming!

Our Week at a Glance

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Questioning  This week we have been discussing how good readers ask themselves questions before, during, and after they read.  We’ve also talked about how to identify “thin” vs. “thick” questions. Today, we sorted out questions that parents asked us at Back to School Night!  Thanks for your great questions, parents!

Place Value  We have been talking more about identifying words in standard, word, model, and expanded forms.  On Thursday, we had a whole math hour of stations where we rotated around the room to play games, sort and match forms, and translate model into word forms.  Some stations were harder than others, but we’ll all be great at these soon!  We also learned about comparing 4-digit numbers by playing a game called “What’s My Number” and using the greater than, less than, and equivalent to symbols.  Your child brought their math notebooks home this weekend to teach you how to play.  Can you beat them?

         

Making Scientific Observations  Although we were dealing with a crazy schedule of MAPS testing and a half-day on Wednesday, we were able to work on our observational skills.  We discussed how using our five senses and being mindful without judgement helps us to be observant of the world around us.  We used descriptive language to describe the attributes of items we couldn’t easily see and identify by sight in mystery bags.  Then we opened the bags and added any other visual descriptions needed.  We also classified pumpkins/gourds and students by specific characteristics.  Good scientists use observational skills to classify and better understand their world!

         

MindUp We continued our study of the brain and how we can help our amygdala to stay calm and open so we can learn our very best.  This week, we focused on deep belly breathing.  Ask your child to tell you about how their diaphragm and lungs work when you are deep belly breathing.  The pictures below capture it. I promise we didn’t have nap time this week…no matter how bad we all needed it!

  

Family Above all else, we have been working on building a family community and learning how to love on each other.  I caught this young man teaching another to tie his shoes.  This is love, people.  This is love.

First Class – Present Class Thirteen years ago, I taught my very first class at Donahoe Elementary. They were a special kindergarten group of whom, many are still in contact with me. My sweet Kaitlyn (pictured in center), who is now a senior in high school, came to observe me for a day and made me boo hoo when she told me she wants to be a teacher one day, too.  I had to have a picture of these two beautiful worlds colliding.

I’m blessed to have this group of smarties!