Over the next two years, I'll use my blog as a platform to explain (in more detail than my email updates) the engagements, workshops, and units of study that we tackle together. So, please check with me over email for reminders on dates, deadlines, or events in the classroom. I'll be using the blog to communicate more about specific curriculum.
With that intention established, I offer you our first blog post of the school year. I'd like to share a little with you about the curricular structures we use in our classroom and how they serve to help us grow each day. Many of you are familiar with the workshops we use throughout the classrooms at the Center for Inquiry, but I'll be sharing with you our classroom family's spin on each structure. I am also working to infuse some of my new learning into some of the workshops. I'll share that below for families who may have had students in my classroom before.
Explorations
Each day as your children finish up Morning Milers or clean up from their activities in the Gathering Room, they will enter the 4th grade classrooms for Explorations. This is a time for students to explore different types of investigations that they choose. Dr. Johnson and I work together so that both of our classes have the option to choose between our classrooms so that we all get access to the cool tools in each room. Some of the options students choose from for this 20 minute block include (and will expand throughout the year) snap circuits, legos, cardboard construction, programming, code writing for computers, puzzles, writing, reading, drawing, math games, chess, checkers, some card games, and more!
Special Areas
For art, music, physical education, computer class, and visiting the cfi library, we travel to see other teachers around the school. The Special Areas teachers and I work to collaborate on some units to help students see connections between their work in both areas.
Mindfulness 10 Practice Time
When we come back into the classroom, we take 10 minutes for a Mindfulness Practice. Mindfulness is the way of being we describe when we are focused, thoughtful, and ready to make a sound and careful choice. We spend 10 minutes choosing an activity like coloring or drawing that will provide us an anchor for our focus, and we work to keep moving our focus back to the given activity when we notice that it shifts. When we meet in Morning Meeting, we start by reflecting on our experiences in Practice.
Morning Meeting
When we meet in Morning Meeting, we begin with that reflection on practice, discussing what we experienced and even where we might use that feeling of mindfulness in our daily lives. We then share a discussion around our News & Journals. Some days we will watch a small, teacher selected clip of CNN News, take notes on what we notice, and discuss what we saw together in small groups and as a whole class. Other days we will simply discuss the journal entries that students share from home. These journal entries could be observations students have made about the world around them or things that they would like us to think about together as a class. To close Morning Meeting each day, we will participate in some brief whole class Word Study work where we look at root words, stems, parts of speech, spelling patters that we might all need reminders about, derivations, and origins of words. We also talk through the Number of the Day. This is a structure that allows us to take a number and think about all the ways we know to talk about or make that number. The information that we uncover in these last two structures help to bolster our vocabularies as readers and our number sense as mathematicians.
Social Studies Workshop or Science Workshop
Right after Morning Meeting we spend time with content. I switch off between Science and Social Studies (per SC state standards) for this time period so that I am not trying to cram in too much information into just 30 minutes of time together each day. We will complete a Science unit all at once and then switch to Social Studies, and vice versa. During this time we work to understand the content we are studying in varied and thorough ways. For example, our first Social Studies unit helped us to get to know one another and explore the ways that we would live and work together. We spent the first few days of school designing and staging our own tableauxs or frozen scenes of the responsibilities that we agreed to carry out so that we preserve the school-wide rights of every classroom family member. In each of these frozen scenes, our fourth graders determined scenes and settings where a given responsibility would matter. They then designed the scene to include the group members as characters in each scene. I've shared the photos of those below. It is so important for us to learn using all the systems available to us. We will certainly read, write, watch videos, discuss, construct arguments, draw, experience the music, listen, and experiment in order to understand Science or Social Studies content. However, the work we do acting out and developing meaning within a small group allows us to embody what we learn in ways that enhance our learning. We had a couple of friends out the day that we performed our tableauxs, but you'll have a chance to view their analysis of the scenes they worked on next week if you visit Wednesday evening or Thursday for Opening Picnic.
 |
| I have a responsibility to friends and myself to treat people with kindness and respect and to do things that will support my friends and myself in being happy. |
 |
| I have a responsibility to learn new things and to support others in doing the same by collaborating and actively participating in our community of inquirers. |
 |
| I have a responsibility to nurture an environment where my friends and I are comfortable respectfully being ourselves and responsibly expressing our opinions. |
 |
| I have a responsibility to listen well to my friends and classmates and to share my thoughts and feelings. |
 |
| I have a responsibility to myself and my friends to help keep my classroom and my school safe and organized.
|
After recess we come in to enjoy one of my most favorite times of the day, Readers' Workshop. I love this time so much because my love of the experience of becoming captivated by a book. During this time we might be researching for a project that we're doing, learning about different genres or authors, or studying ways to use our thinking to better understand what we read. No matter what our class focus is each day, we get a chance to independently read. This independent reading time is some of the most important thought work your child can do if they are truly engaged and interested in what they are reading. That's why it is my job to make sure that we have books that your children care about reading. During that independent time, it is also
my job to confer with individuals and hold small group sessions so that we can get specific instruction on the strategies and skills of reading that we need in order to make the reading process one we engage with ease. I get a chance to meet with students about once every two weeks on average.
Writers' Workshop
Writers' Workshop is the time that we create! We will study and write within multiple genres and styles this year. I love writing as well because of the ways that it allows students (especially at this age) a window into a world of organizing thought and communicating clearly toward making a difference in their lives and in others'. I find that these two years are crucial for students as writers. We have a blast as writers, creating and using our writing for projects. We exercise our creativity and balance it with strong understanding of structure, grammatical and organizational. Each day we get a chance to write independently as well. The independent time is also the time when I confer with individuals or teach small group sessions. My goal for all my students as writers is that they can effectively and eloquently express themselves on the page with as much confidence as they would when they share their thoughts out loud in class.Mathematicians' Workshop
This is the workshop where I am focusing some new energy this year. I find math personally lots of fun and beautiful in the ways that it describes and can even help predict somethings. Data is full of patterns that I really enjoy piecing together. However, math did not used to be fun for me at all. I was convinced for most of my school career that I was not good at math and therefore could not enjoy math. In fact, what ended up the case was that I did not let myself see the potential for enjoyment in it and therefore did not practice enough to feel confident. After having a math teacher who helped me to experience that shift toward seeing differently, I became confident and practiced differently. I will be working these first few weeks of school to practice the skills and strategies that we always teach at the beginning of the year with an emphasis on the mathematical process qualities that will lead students to solving problems with confidence.Over the summer several teachers from our school participated in a book club around a book that is helping us structure our math classrooms with more pointed and thoughtful problem-solving talk between students. The structure of this workshop will be similar to the other process workshops above (reading and writing), but during the independent time, we will be working more often in pairs to solve complex multi-step problems that address our fourth grade standards. During that independent time we also use a free, web-based program called Khan Academy for particular and detailed support. This site is accessible from home as well. It allows me to assign things to our students. When we meet for our first curriculum night, I can give everyone the information they need to access this site at home for extra practice if you choose.
Thank you all for sharing your next two years and your children with our classroom family! I am grateful everyday for the opportunity to do this work.
