Over the next several weeks, we will be completing a project using what we are coming to know about light and sound to create some movies! One of my friends, Drew, studied film making in college and works for the Columbia Museum of Art creating promotional videos and photographs for the museum. He will be joining us to talk a little about how sound and light are used in film production, and how we can use them to create soundscapes and lighting for movies of our own. We will be creating those movies in small groups and sharing them with you when we finish! Here is some of Drew's work, a promo video for the museum's gala last year:
Reading Strategically
Over the next several weeks, we will also be studying our thinking as readers. When you enter our classroom, if you look to the left, just past the book crates, you'll notice a display of notecards on the wall. It is helping us keep track of all the things we have learned this year about reading. The majority of the notecards label things about texts; different formats, structures, and aspects of the actual writing itself. The ways of thinking that really support readers are also up on the wall. We will be studying those more thoroughly in the next few days. Our first week, we paid attention to our inferences, the explanations or guesses we come up with as reasons for certain events or characters' choices in the book. This week we are studying the questions that drive us to look more deeply into what we are learning about in a non-fiction book or even more deeply into the characters' experiences in our fiction stories. As we are emphasizing these types of strategic thought, we will be bringing them up in discussion and in conferences to see them play out in our own books.
Writing: Creating Presentations
Next month, we will be holding Student Led Conferences, to prepare for those, we will be talking about creating presentations. We will be reviewing our work from the past few months and discussing ways to set goals for ourselves for the end of our fourth grade year together. We will be focusing on the literary skills that support great, clear, and informative presenting while working to make sure that what we share is interesting and really features our personalities. Stay tuned for a SignUpGenius email that will allow you to choose your family's time to join us for your student's presentation. We will be holding these on the afternoon & evening of Thursday, February 16 (3:30 to 7:30) and the afternoon on Friday, February 18 (12:30-6:00).
I mentioned in the last blog post that we would be creating an expert project around biographies. That is still on the horizon. So, please keep in mind some of the historical figures that your child might want to study, for when we cycle back to our Social Studies units.
I am truly grateful for all of you in our classroom family! Thank you for your generosity before Christmas break and always. Your willingness to share your children and lives over these last two years at CFI is the greatest gift, of all. I hope you're enjoying getting back in the swing of things. See you all soon!
