Sample of Topics and Skills Explored Over the Past Few Months

Dear Parents,

Our fourth quarter progress reports will be available for you to pick up from CFI in just a few weeks. Unlike the lengthy narrative reports you receive after the first and third quarters, these rubric reports are much more scaled down (brief). The reports will list the strands that fall within each curricular area as created by our South Carolina State Standards. For each of these strands I enter a value that corresponds with your child’s growth. The report will include a two-page letter explaining these values and how they are determined.

To help you to make better sense of what types of things we have been doing in the classroom during the past few months I will provide a quick list of skills that were uncovered during our work.

               

Reading               

Synonyms, Antonyms, and Homonyms

Analyzing details from a literary text

Analyzing details from a non-fiction text

Responding to texts

Discussing literature in ways to help us grow our own thinking as well as that of our peers

Finding and using text features

Writing

Poetry

Generating ideas

Revision

Editing

Writing for a variety of purposes

Letter writing

Learning from a mentor piece   

Conferencing with peers

Publishing

Math    

Problem-solving strategies

Analyzing patterns

Interpret models of equal grouping and other work around multiplication

Data analysis

Probability         

Social Studies    

Laws

Election process

Nation-states

Current news

Equity

Science

Effects of moving air

Weather terminology (temperature, wind direction, wind speed, and parcipitation)

Weather conditions of different seasons

Daily weather

Representing current sky conditions

Safety precautions in severe weather

Please refer back to earlier posts on the blog for more detailed information about many of these studies.

Thanks,

Chris

Our Class is Featured on the USC Website

Be sure to check out the front page of the USC website to see a short video featuring our classroom. A small group of our kiddos are engaged in a discussion of the Ruby Bridges autobiography. How fun!

Newsletter: May 29, 2012

Dear Families,

Thanks to everyone who made it out to the movie and pizza. It was great fun. I hope you enjoyed the CDs on the ride home. It's fun to see the kids take pride in becoming singer/songwriters. This CD project was a learning process for me. In the past I have had someone come into the classroom and do the recording, mixing, copying, and packaging. Thanks to your generous gift at Winter Break, and with a bit of assistance and a good amount of trial-and-error, I can now do all this on my own. We have many extra copies in the classroom to give special guests as a thank you for their visit. We gave out our first CD last week to Dr. Susi Long who visited us from USC to talk about her visit to Sierra Leone last summer as well as the time she spent teaching abroad in England, Iceland, and Germany.

Mr. O'Keefe's class also makes CDs each year and uses them as a fundraiser for a cause relating to their classroom study. This year they have been raising money for Rwandan Hugs. This is the same non-profit organization our class and Mrs. Pender's class have been working to support.  Between the three classes we raised about $2,000. This money will go toward purchasing 40 goats for families in need. Thank you so much for your support of our efforts.

Over the past few months we have also been working to bring in items for the Camden Animal Shelter. We now have a nice big box full of towels, food, and toys to share with the animals. As much as I would have loved to set up a field study where we could personally deliver these items and help out around the shelter, the building is too small to accommodate all of us. So I will be delivering the supplies. I know they will be so thankful for the efforts of each and every member of our classroom.

Feeling connected to our community, our school, and our classmates has been a major component of our curriculum this year. This will continue into next year as well. I once read a line from a fellow teacher who wrote "I had gone off to be a teacher, asking myself from time to time if it might be possible to teach English in such a way that people would stop killing each other." This really resonated with and inspired me. We can learn to read and write, work with numbers, and develop an understanding of our history and natural world within the context of making the world a better place.  The best example is our reading and writing workshop. So long as we are working to build understanding from texts we may as well access texts with themes that address important issues such as friendship, responsibility, caring for the earth, standing up for others, appreciating and respecting difference, etc.

Our most recent study was to look at fairy tales in a way that allowed us to analyze the messages they sometimes send about gender. We read a variety of stories and watched one of Disney's more well-known titles to see what we noticed. The kids found that boys are much more likely to save themselves or others from danger than girls are, girls are portrayed as being beautiful but they often do not have other attributes of importance (such as intelligence, bravery, or strength), and wealth, marriage, and royalty are the primary goals of female characters. We wondered if publishers and producers of such stories and movies are aware of the messages they are sending about girls so we launched a letter writing campaign. The kids chose to write letters sharing their concern and offering possible solutions to Scholastic, Disney, The State, parents, and teachers. Congrats to each of them for taking action!

We're now enjoying our last few days of second grade together. We're finishing up a few stories, singing some songs, wrapping our brains around some really challenging math problems, and thinking about ways we might say goodbye to the fifth grade.

Chris

After reading our fairy tales with you at home we created a graph to show which were "great", "good", "okay", and "bad." The winner was - GREAT!

Of the five fairy tales with a female lead, four made beauty a very important characteristic.

Here is the list of people the kids chose to write to.

Addressing an envelope to Walt Disney Studios. The request: more fairy tales with a strong female lead.

Tallying to see which sums come up most often when rolling two dice together. As a class we collected more than 500 sums to graph.

The kids went out and conducted their own probability graphs and predictions. This time around there were bags with five colored tiles in them. The kids made a series of blind draws, recorded the result, and then predicted how many of each color was in the bag.

A visit from Dr. Susi Long. She told us about her trip with a group of educators to Sierra Leone last summer.

A Special Letter to Parents About Fairy Tales

Dear Parents,
I just want you to think about how boys mostly save girls in most fairy tales. Only in a little bit of fairy tales do girls save boys. And I think there should be more fairy tales when girls save boys. And I think people should show that girls are strong just like boys. So what do you think? Maybe you should e-mail the book publishers.

From,
Connor

School Lunches

Just a heads up...

Beginning on Friday the cafeteria will only be serving bag lunches. The kids need to order them a day in advance. I believe they're serving ham and cheese sandwiches each day. This will continue for the remainder of the year. Thank you.

Nightly HW Check-In Sheets

There are no nightly sheets to sign this week. The only homework is to read each night.

Thanks

Update on Saturday

Well, the theater says they won't have a schedule for Saturday's show times until Thursday. So I won't know exact times until then. I'm going to shoot for a window of 11 - 2 for both the pizza and movie. If the movie is not offered at a good time I'll either see if there's a good alternative or we'll just do lunch instead. I'll let you know specifics on Thursday. I apologize things are not formalized!

Chris

Newsletter: May 11, 2012

Dear Families,

Time is running out on us. We have only three weeks left before summer break. Over this time we'll be:

* reading and discussing the final book in the Sarah, Plain and Tall series.
* conducting one more round of book clubs.
* discussing the meaning of the chant we mindlessly recite each morning - the Pledge of Allegiance.
* learning to write each of our lower- and upper-case cursive letters.
* publishing one final piece of writing.
* organizing our writing portfolios.
* learning a few new songs and thinking about tunes we'd like to learn next year.
* exploring probability.
* beginning work on multiplication facts.
* solving math problems posed in real world scenarios.
* learning of food and nutrition differences across our community, country, and globe.
* recognizing the connection between power and global nutrition.
* learning the difference between hungry and hunger.
* mucking around to find the qualities and differences between solids, liquids, and gases.
* finishing our final read aloud - Shiloh.

This week we made a big dent in our lower-case cursive letters. We have just eight or so remaining. The kids really, really love learning cursive. Someone said yesterday, "If I could choose between recess and doing cursive all day long I'd pick cursive!" I'm not all that certain I'm loving it quite that much (all day?) but it is great to see everyone having so much fun. Their handwriting is looking better and better each day - as is mine.

I shared a news article from The State newspaper on Thursday telling how President Obama  declared his support for same-sex marriage. We talked about the fact there are two schools of thought concerning marriage - one says it is for one man and one woman who love each other and the other says it is for any couple who loves each other. I didn't share my own opinion this time around but I did mention the need to talk about issues rather than avoiding them and to work toward understanding all perspectives while treating others with respect and dignity. I also shared some personal experiences I've had with friends or acquaintances being physically attacked or hiding parts of their identity for fear of being fired. A few of the kids came back in this morning and shared with me discussions they had at home about this topic. I love when the kids continue these types of discussions with you in the car or around the dinner table. As always, if you see an intriguing article of news be sure to send it in with your child to share.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Mother's Day weekend!
Chris

Movie and Lunch - Saturday, May 19th

As mentioned in the last newsletter, the class is planning to see a movie together at the Sandhills Regal Cinema next Saturday and then head over to CiCis for pizza. The movie is Chimpanzee. I'm not sure yet what the show time will be. I will let you know on Monday.

 I hope you all are able to join us. However, I know weekends in May can be awfully busy with many commitments. If I can help by offering a ride or helping you find someone to have your child carpool with please let me know.


Thanks,
Chris

Fairy Tale/Written Conversation Homework

Here's a copy of the homework letter I sent home tonight...

Homework: Due Tuesday, May 15th

The Role of Gender in Fairy Tales

Dear Parents,

           

The class has spent the past week or so studying fairy tales to see what, if any, messages they send about being a girl versus being a boy. We read Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty to see how female lead characters are portrayed. Next, we read Puss in Boots and Jack and the Beanstalk to see how male lead characters are portrayed.

What did we find?

·         The most important characteristic of the female lead characters is their beauty.

·         Females consistently find themselves in danger but are rescued by a male (often a prince) and subsequently marry into wealth for a “happily ever after” ending.

·         Female skills (even if they are a princess) are cleaning and cooking

·         Male lead characters are described as clever and brave.

·         Male lead characters devise a plan to save themselves from danger or some other predicament.

·         Male skills are providing and protecting

            We are now in search of fairy tales (or similar type tales) that break this mold. The kids have each been matched with a story. They had time at school to read through it and to analyze its content using the following questions as a frame:

·         What are the main characters strongest attributes (abilities, strengths)?

·         What powers does the main character have to make decisions for themself or for others?

·          What does the main character dream of doing/becoming/being?

·         How is the problem solved for the main character?

I’ve now asked the kids to bring their book home and read it to you. As the two of you read it together be on the lookout for messages, both positive and negative, relating to gender. When you finish your reading engage in a written conversation about what each of you noticed. My hope is to have the kids come back in next Tuesday ready to share some good stories as well as to teach us about what messages these books are sending.

            As I listen to the kids present their books next week I’ll be interested to see if there are fairy tales where the female lead character saves herself (or even a male)? I’ll also be curious to know if more recent stories are more likely to have strong female characters than the traditional ones? We’ll see.

            I will share the results of this study in a future newsletter on the class blog. I’ll also offer more insight into both the academic and social goals of such a critique.  Thanks for your support in making this study a success.

                                                                                                                                    Chris

DVD Request

Does anyone have a copy of either Beauty and the Beast or, better yet, Snow White that we could borrow for a day? We're studying fairy tales and I would like to show one of these two films to compare to some of the things we've been noticing in the books. We'll tell you more about what we find in the newsletter at the end of the week.

Thanks,
Chris

Newsletter: May 4, 2012

Dear Families,

We've been very busy this week sorting, counting, and rolling the change we've been collecting for Rwandan Hugs (Help Us Get Started). This is a non-profit organization that works to support survivors of the Rwandan genocide. For $50 we can  provide a family with a goat. Goats provide income security, horsepower and fertilizer, milk, and an opportunity to breed more goats that are then passed along to other families in need. To date, we have raised about $185. We are trying hard to collect a few more coins and bills because an anonymous donor has offered to double our money once we reach $200. How amazing is that?

Of course, there's also a lot of great math to be found in counting money. There's the sorting by coin. Which coins would you expect are most common in our jar? The answer is pennies. But why?

Counting money also gives us opportunities to skip count, develop strategies to ensure we have the correct amount, and see a real world model of repeated addition (aka: multiplication). Stacks of five pennies, arrays of nickels, collections of quarter roles - these are all great opportunities to think about multiplication.

Rolling our money has provided an opportunity to talk about the necessity of accuracy in math. This is not a time for estimations or valuing a process more than the actual answer. No, the teller at the bank will expect us to work carefully and get it EXACTLY correct. To better our chances we are asking two different classmates to check our work before placing the coins into the rolls. I then line up the rolls to see if they all appear to be the exact same length. So far, so good!

Over the last few weeks of school we will continue to collect, sort, count, and roll. Thank you all for the support you've offered this project over the past few months. If you'd like to help the kids finish strong please consider helping them think of extra chores they might be able to do around the house to earn a little extra money to bring in. Better yet, help them count it first at home and then sort it into different piles to demonstrate how multiplication works to make counting money faster and easier.

One Other Note of Interest...

Each year I like to have a whole class outing to celebrate our year together. Next year we will head out to Sesqui for a campfire and camp out. This year I'd like to meet for a movie and pizza. On Saturday, May 19th we'll plan to meet at the Sandhills to see the new Chimpanzee movie and then head over to CiCi's for lunch. I'm not certain of the showtimes yet but I'll shoot for late morning/late afternoon. I know, of course, some families will have conflicts. However, if you're free please plan to join us!

Have a great weekend,
Chris

Call for Penny Rolls

We are currently working to roll all the change we've been collecting for Rwandan Hugs. We've quickly found that we have WAY more pennies than we have rolls. If anyone has any spare penny rolls at home we'd love to have them.

Thanks,
Chris