The Landform project will NOT be due on October 10 as we need more time to work. I will be posting the official deadline for this project within the week. Stay tuned!
Thursday's Curriculum Night 7 pm:
On Thursday evening, I'm planning for students to share with you all the work we have been doing in Khan Academy. I will be asking students to give us a short briefing on their work on Khan Academy and then we will be using the rest of our time for them to work on some parts of Khan with you all. We will start at 7:00 pm. We hope you can join us!
Friday's Zoo Field Trip:
We are all looking forward to a lovely zoo trip on Friday. We will be boarding buses at 9 am and planning to be back at school by around 2 pm. At the zoo we will be collecting sketches of different animals in groups. This is always a wonderful bonding opportunity for our CFI Family. If you are planning to join us as a chaperone, please send me a quick email so that I can plan groups accordingly. Friday will be wonderful!
News: Opportunities for Action:
Our news discussions have been so rich lately. We are finding connections between all kinds of news events in our communities and greater world. Our discussions run the gamut from world politics and environmentalism to current science theories and economics. Each week it is important for us to hear from everyone by way of the news they are sharing. I am asking that we all come prepared for sharing our news articles by having read them thoroughly enough that we can give a summary. I am also asking that we have some quotes in mind to help provide us the specific words of the author or reporter. As a class, we would love to hear about the discussions that you are having at home around current events that might make our discussions richer. In the next month or so, we will also be compiling ideas about how to take action in some of the situations we are uncovering through new articles. We would love your input on how we might best do something to support the causes and people who are doing great work in making our world a better place. Thank you for thinking on this with us!
Share Fair:
Our Share Fair this past week was lovely. When we debriefed the experience together, we noticed several patterns that we will be considering as we plan for our next share fair. Will, Zoe, Charles, and Justin all noticed that several students from the other CFI classes stayed for the entire project shares that they conducted. Alani, Tim, and Kelly both took great care to make sure that their audiences were truly interested and engaged by providing the younger students the option to only hear parts of their stories. I can't wait to see how the next Share Fair goes for our classroom family!
Landforms Project Update:
We have started learning together about landforms over the past week and a half, and we are uncovering such cool information. As a whole class, we've begun investigating the processes that created Mount Everest, some of the cultural importance of the mountain, and how scientists come to understand this landform. We will be using this whole class study as a model for our own Landform Projects. This means that all week long, I will be modeling from our Everest information possibilities for writing the introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusions for our essays. We will then be writing the essays for each of our individual projects on our own during our independent time. We should be finished with the first draft of our essays by the end of the day on Thursday.
My Process for Returning Feedback on Assignments & Students' Responsibilities
Now that we are well into our first quarter, I wanted to share with you all at home how I am providing feedback on assignments for students. When I respond to or score an assignment, I will be given those back to students in their feedback folders (blue hanging files in the classroom). Students get those assignments, if they have full credit, then they will keep them in their portfolio folders (green hanging files in the classroom). When students have not earned full credit on an assignment, I expect them to correct everything they missed in order to earn back some credit. Students must turn these assignments in to me by the Friday of that week. I have been sending missing assignment emails out to students to make sure we are turning in all of our work and getting those assignments corrected. If I notice a pattern in missing work or missing corrected work, I will be contacting families in order that we get back on track with meeting our responsibilities.
Upcoming Dates:
Oct. 9 Curriculum Night 7 pm
Oct. 10 CFI Zoo Field Trip
Oct. 16 & 17 Student Holidays
Oct. 30 Fall Festival 1:30pm
Oct. 31 Half Day for Students
