Newsletter: Week Six

Dear Families,

This week we celebrated a very big accomplishment – we finished writing our first song together. What started with a few simple chords and two lines from Connor grew into a full piece with many verses, a catchy chorus, and a change-of-pace bridge. The song is truly a collaborative piece. After writing a few verses together as a whole group Ms. Brinson and I sent the kids out in groups of threes to write a verse for the song. Each group was assigned one of our class’ Rights and Responsibilities to focus their verse on. The theme of the song was building community.

After the kids created their verses I took everything home and spent a week or so putting their work together in a cohesive manner and adding in a chorus and bridge. The end result is quite nice. They are all SO proud to now call themselves songwriters. I’m attaching the lyrics for our song to the end of this newsletter. We’ll be performing it for the first time at our Gathering two weeks from today, October 7th. We hope you can be there to hear it. If not, never fear. We’ll perform it again for you during our first Curriculum Night.

Other than putting the final touches on our song we’ve done quite a lot this past week. We began with a discussion of what we believe reading to be. The kids offered:

Sitting and reading a book and learning new words; helping you learn bigger
words; looking at words; learning about things; finding words you forgot;
reading is thinking and imagining; helping you prepare for school; chunking
parts of words; making illustrations; saying the words on the page; looking
at words and making sense of them; and it’s good for you.

We’re learning now that reading is about more than just looking at words and illustrations on a page. It’s much more than combining letters and syllables. Rather, reading is thinking. So much goes on in our heads when we sit and really become engaged in a text. We envision the story, activate prior knowledge, make connections, ask questions of the text, make predictions, and more. If you’re not thinking, you’re not reading. With this in mind we worked as readers this week to envision the text as we read it. The kids made a variety of sketches, they listened to stories with their eyes closed, and turned to describe how they thought key characters and scenes might look. Reading should never be passive – certainly not if our goal is to understand what it is we’re reading.

We worked as scientists this week as we observed, sketched, and took notes on a couple of different critters. On Tuesday we spent time looking closely at crickets. Using hand lenses, and equipped with their science journals, the kids sketched what they saw and created lists of physical and behavioral observations. Some tried to move beyond observations to inferences, such as “He’s trying to claw his way out of the bottle.” We’re moving toward using our observations to create inferences that we can then test. I stopped them at one point to ask, “Isn’t this so much better than just reading this from a book?!” As much as I love books there’s something to be said for a truly authentic study. Later in the week we studied some worms Mr. O brought in for us. Again, the kids listed physical and behavioral observations. This time, though, they also started generating questions they wondered about.

After working with the people at their tables the kids came back to the front of the room and pooled together portions of their information. Some of their questions included:

What kinds of worms are there? Do worms NOT like light?
Which part is the head? Do they have to live in soil?
What body parts are inside a worm? What happens when you cut one in half?
Do worms have ears to hear? Do they have eyes?
Are there boy and girl worms? Why is there a point at one end of the worm?
How long can they get? Do worms throw up?


These types of experiences are at the very heart of inquiry. This is not reading three pages from a science text and then answering a question or two at the end. The kids are very much living the life of a scientist. They are making careful observations, beginning to develop inferences, and thinking of questions they’d like to explore. This will serve them well as we enter into our first expert projects of the year in a few weeks – an animal you’d love to better understand.

As we learn about animals we are also dipping into the world of plants (as a food source) as well. Thanks to everyone for sending in those great seeds. We had such great variety to sketch, sort, and discuss. We’re planning to use these in classroom experiments very soon. As part of this study we’ll be taking a field study week after next to City Roots Farm. This is an urban farm in downtown Columbia. We’ll learn about farming, composting, beekeeping, and more. We’ll then head over to the Farmer’s Market to learn about farms in our state and grab a piece of fruit or two for lunch. I may walk the kids over to Bi-Lo at some point as well to see where the produce we eat is grown (have you seen the oranges from South Africa?). I’ll continue to work out the specifics and let you know what our plans are next week.

Have a great weekend,

Chris

Building Community

We love science,
we love math
Art and music
and computer lab

Goin' to recess
to play O-ball
Talkin' with friends
but that's not all

Tellin' jokes
that make us laugh
We get along
yes, that's a fact

We’re buidin’ community
To live in harmony
Friendship is the key
To this community

Help each other
in every way
So we can have a
beautiful day

Care about others
Invite them to play
Everyone’s included
That’s our way

Be nice to new friends
In the whole school
Because we know friends
Are so, so cool

[[CHORUS]]


Use your manners
Open your ears
Do what’s right
And save your tears

Work out problems
All of the time
Share with others, don’t
Fuss and whine

Maisy, Ashley,
And our friend Trent
Give lots of
Nice compliments

So can you, so can we
So should you, so should we

We love science,
we love math
Art and music
and computer lab

Goin' to recess
to play O-ball
Talkin' with friends
but that's not all

Tellin' jokes
that make us laugh
We get along
yes, that's a fact

[[CHORUS]]