Story Mountains
One of the ways that humans understand the world around them is through story. We are just finishing up our work with logos and our first free writing pieces, many of which are stories. We will all be engaging over the next few weeks, though in the process of writing a fiction narrative. This story will be one that follows the structure of a "story mountain." Some of you may know this structure as a plot diagram. It was one of the ways that our teachers in school probably helped us better understand the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution of a story. We will be using it, though, as a reading and writing tool. We use it to help ourselves better understand the progression of a story and how the tension rises and falls throughout a story. It will also be one of the ways that we structure our up-coming work with fiction narratives. A major part of our work as writers will be to develop a sense of craft, or the intentional placement or creation of certain parts of a piece of writing in order to accomplish some affect for the reader. At home over the next two weeks, I will be asking students to share with you some of the ways they are crafting their characters' experiences so that the readers can really feel and understand what their characters are experiencing. I will be asking them to read parts of their stories to someone at home for feedback and support a few nights a week. Thank you in advance for your help with this!

Discussion & Listening
In our classroom, discussion is a really important learning tool for us! We converse with one another to get ideas, check our thinking with others, solve problems, deepen understanding, show that we care, and accomplish so many other things. Last week we begin really working on discussing in small groups in ways that facilitate understanding and building on ideas. After a few trials, we met together as a whole group and several students (and I) shared that listening and focusing on others' comments seemed to be something we could work on together. So, we are working on listening now. We are taking up a practice of intentional listening to demonstrate care and respect to each other and to grow our own thinking. Hamilton shared that his dad often asks him to listen with his "eyes, ears, and energy." We began considering what that would look like and feel like from each of us. In each small group discussion we have now, there is an emphasis on listening and focusing on what the speaker is saying, then carefully thinking about it, and responding thoughtfully. I am sharing this with you all because I would love for you to consider taking up intentional listening at home. I will continue to share what we uncover together as a class, but I would love to hear and share with everyone in class what you and yours are doing at home to really put energy into listening.

Geometry
We will be wrapping up our unit in geometry over the next week and a half. I will be sending home students' math notebooks for them to begin studying for their first geometry assessment. This will be a written and performance assessment, meaning that parts of it will look like a traditional math test and parts will involve students demonstrating live, how to construct a symmetrical shape, how to find the measure of an angle, or the ways we categorize shapes. In their math notebooks, each night this week, instead of taking home math problems, I will be asking them to teach someone at home, one specific thing they've learned in math. After teaching each thing, I will ask that they write a short (1 paragraph) reflection on how that teaching went, answering questions like, where did you get stuck? Did you need your notes to explain any part of it? Did your 'student' have any questions, if so, what were they and how did you answer them? That will serve as the homework to be turned in at the end of the week. It should also facilitate the engaged, interactive, and focused type of studying that I would like to encourage for all students this year.