Newsletter: Week Seven

Dear Families,

I hope those of you who made it out to the zoo with us had a good time. Everyone is always excited for this school-wide trip. Two years ago I asked my second grade class to observe and code the behaviors of flamingoes. Last year my third graders launched an inquiry into whether zoos were good or bad. We used the field study to compare what we saw with what we were reading in various books, articles, and essays. This year our focus was on being careful observers. The groups sat to observe a couple of things during their trip and then sketched these into their journals. A good sketch is always accompanied with some labels or descriptive text – not to mention a few meaningful thoughts or questions. It was a good time. Be sure to ask for a first-hand report.

In the classroom this week we worked on…

• Establishing literacy partners who will help push us in our independent
reading
• Recognizing the internal conversation that takes place in our heads as we
read
• Building numbers with blocks to better understand place value and build
solving more complex addition and subtraction problems
• Organizing our memoirs and noticing different ways authors choose to begin
their pieces
• Designing and conducting experiments with our seeds
• Learning where our food comes from and wondering how it gets there
• Learning a new plant song and deciding whether we liked our “Building
Community” song as an acoustic piece or a crunchy electric piece (This vote
was not close!)

Our visit to the grocery store sparked an interest (or at least curiosity) in different types of foods. When asked what foods they saw that they had never tried but would like to they answered… kiwi, cauliflower, raspberry, blackberry, pineapple, blueberry, okra, onion, plum, peaches, beets, red/green/yellow pepper, mango, turnip greens, coconut, and oranges. I’m going to pick up a few of these over the weekend and we’ll enjoy a tasting party to see what these foods taste like.

Remember that next week we go to the City Roots Farm and farmer’s market on Tuesday. If anyone is interested in joining us please let me know. We’d love to have you along. I’ve heard the farm is an extraordinarily interesting place and I’m excited to see it myself. Afterward, while visiting the farmer’s market, I’m going to grab a few fresh items from local farms to bring back. We’ll use these to conduct a taste test – Farmer’s Market Produce vs Grocery Store Produce. We’ll see if it actually does taste fresher. (Of course, this decision will be made by a population who think Fruit Roll-Ups are very delicious so there’s no telling what we’re going to find!)

Because this is an unusually short newsletter I’m going to attach a number of photos to help tell the story of our week.

Have a great weekend,
Chris