Guitar Notes from Feb. 9th and 10th

Thanks to Colby for his fine camera work!

Culture Study

Mrs. Vice is working with the kids to launch an inquiry into different cultures of the world. She started by sharing a book titled Celebrate: Connections Among Cultures that showed how different cultures use music, food, decoration, dance, and even fire to celebrate in their own way. The kids broke off into groups to read more. As they read, they used a highlighter or highlighter tape to mark the key words, phrases, and ideas from their texts. Below is are some videos of the kids at work. Note how their talk helps them to better understand what they're reading.

Guitar Lessons - Feb. 5

Here is a quick reminder of what we covered during today's guitar lesson.

Explorations and a New Song

Here's a quick look at what the classroom looks like during Explorations. We begin most every school day with about 25 minutes of Explorations. This is a time when the kids can come in and choose to work at the science table or in their writing notebooks or challenge someone to a game of chess. You will see each of these choices being acted out on the video in addition to reader's theater, number of the day, the class history log, and Othello.


We also learned a new song today. It is called Together We Can Change the World. Mrs. Barnes shared it with us all via e-mail so we read through the lyrics, watched the video on youtube, and then sang the song together.

Stone Fox Book Chats

Next week the kids will be engaged in book clubs. This will consist of choosing a book they like, reading daily, and meeting periodically with others in the class who are reading the same book to discuss what they are noticing and thinking. I expect, due to our focus next week on problem/solution and cause/effect in literature, that many of their discussions will include at least a bit of talk about this.

In preparation for these chats, we are reading Stone Fox together this week. Each day we read a few chapters together and practice how to discuss literature with others (we've actually done a good bit of this all year with each of the books we've read). A significant part of this is learning to stick with a topic of discussion rather than just jumping from random thought to random thought.

Be sure to check out the videos below of the kids' book chats. They are doing a GREAT job. I bet you'll see that their book chats aren't too unlike the adult book chats that go on all around the country. In fact, they probably do a BETTER job of staying on topic. Enjoy! (I did video each of our groups but unfortunately I can only post two of them. The other two videos were not loading very quickly at all.)

Winter Musical Program

Here are videos of two of the songs our class performed at the Musical Gathering just before Winter Break. I tried my best to get everyone but from my vantage point, just behind Mrs. Edwards' legs, it was a bit tricky. Enjoy!

Tour de Trent

Thanks to Reese and his family, we were lucky enough last week to be visited by elite cyclist Aaron Trent. A few weeks ago Reese brought in a current news article about a local man who, when given Penicillin as a baby, had a severe allergic reaction resulting in a cerebral palsy-like condition. However, after years of loving sports yet not being able to participate Aaron found a love for cycling. Even better, he found that he was exceptionally good at it.

He is now taking a year off from classes at USC to train full-time for the 2012 Paralympics in London. He is so dedicated to his training that he actually mounted his bicycle right outside our doors and took off on a training ride. He shared that he rides about 350 miles per week.

Aaron's story was very inspirational and he was an extremely nice guy. The kids were so excited that they pulled out their writing notebooks and asked for an autograph. A big thank you to Reese and his dad for helping to arrange this special visit.