These first weeks are always hard to write about - there's so much I want to share about just the doings in the classroom. But all the doings have background information and whys that I also want to share. I want you to feel as though you are a partner in your child's work but in order to do that, you have to know what they're doing at a deep level. Thus the long blogs. It gets better. Mostly.
Trees Around Us
This week we learned how to use a dichotomous key to identify trees. We began a tree map of the trees we have at Prairie Creek and are close to being ready to combine our maps to create a map of the whole property. Interestingly, we found groups of similar trees planted close to each other...
We also learned how to approximate the age of a tree by measuring its circumference, finding its diameter and looking up the growth factor of the tree (how many years it takes to grow an inch in diameter.) Amazingly, depending on species, that growth factor can range from two years an inch to seven years an inch. Even more amazingly, there are trees at Prairie Creek that are well over a hundred years old! We haven't worked with our data yet but even as we were collecting it, students were trying to figure out when and why different groups of trees were planted. Which ones were there when the first school was built? Which were added later and why? We haven't talked about volunteer trees or how trees propagate themselves yet, either.
On Wednesday, we'll take the Chickadees on a tree tour and teach them about some of the trees we've learned about so far. The Chicks are trying to pick out an "elder" tree on which to hang their hopes and dreams.


Week of Inspirational Math
Our first week of shared math began this week with a series of lessons to set the tone for our math learning this year. Across all curricular areas but especially in math, we stress "the growth mindset." The concept has been expanded upon in the work of Carol Dweck but, in a nutshell, it's the concept that the brain is plastic and is able to change and adapt to new learning. Intelligence is not a fixed trait. The brain can literally grow when it is stimulated by new ideas and, importantly, working through failure. When we fix mistakes and learn from them, we strengthen our connection to the original learning. The more risks we take, the more mistakes we encounter (and fix) the deeper and more lasting our learning.
More easily said than done. As humans, we like the feeling of being good at something. The work of learning from mistakes can feel frustrating, embarrassing, and fruitless. So we have to counter those negative feelings with a lot of direct instruction around growth mindset, flexibility in math thinking, learning from mistakes, and taking risks to learn. We tell kids to expect that learning is uncomfortable and, if they aren't uncomfortable, they aren't doing as much learning as they could be doing. We also coach them to watch negative talk. Herons learn to end the statement "I'm not good at such and such" with a "YET."
We've been watching videos about the growth mindset. One of which, by Khan Academy, is here. The others are by Jo Boaler who has some great material about the growth mindset and math (especially useful if you, as a parent, have math fears or think you're "not a math person.") They are at https://www.youcubed.org but you have to sign up to view them.
Cathy, Gabe and I have each been teaching lessons about creative math thinking and math group expectations. At curriculum night, I shared the lesson I am teaching as an example of a low threshold, high ceiling task. We were continuing a pattern. Some students built it with tiles, others drew it, still others (when the pattern got too big) figured out patterns in the numbers that let them move just to numbers and not have to draw it. Three of our paras spent their lunch time trying to figure out the formula for the series! All learners, including myself, were engaged with the challenge and there were many different ways to be successful. All of them involved the work of a mathematician - looking for patterns, making and testing conjectures, simplifying problems etc.
This math is our "exploration math." We meet for about an hour a day to explore different math themes (next week we'll be looking at decimals in the context of the Olympics.) Children are in different groups throughout the year. Right now, we're in our classroom groups but that will change in upcoming themes when we think it might be useful to have students working on similar skills together.
We also have "foundation math" every day we have "exploration math." In foundation math, students are with other students who are learning similar computation skills. We teach algorithms that enable students to do computational math correctly and efficiently. They have built up their number sense in the earlier grades so that these algorithms (click to see videos of the algorithms) are easier to grasp and "make sense." Much more about that later!
Reading Goals
I am wrapping up my beginning of the year assessments and we've had a lot of great discussions about reading stamina and setting reading goals. We came up with many different kinds of goals from pacing (how many pages will you read a day?) to choosing new genres to read. So often, students equate being a better reader with reading a thicker book. Developmentally, that makes sense - fourth and fifth graders are still pretty concrete and bigger=harder in their minds. However, becoming a strong reader has many different elements from stamina (sticking to that giant book) to comparing texts to visualizing to identifying themes to appreciating craft to reading with fluency to learning new vocabulary in context. I will support students with mini-lessons and tools so they can achieve their learning goals.
Bird Buddies
We got our bird buddies on Friday. The Herons are paired with the Doves and Egrets. It's always fun to see the groups begin to make new connections. My crew took the new iPads on a spin and did a photo scavenger hunt that included silly selfies (here is one student putting a disguise on her bird buddy). Now all I have to do is figure out how to get those selfies printed!
Recess Work
The big birds received their recess jobs this week and training began. Big Birds are trained as either game leaders, woods stewards or bird watchers. Each group learns how to engage the younger students in play and help them solve problems. It's important work that sets the tone and expectations for the older kids. When we began the program about three years ago, I asked my class how many of them had had an older student be mean to them at some point at Prairie Creek. Almost every hand went up (remember the question was, "Has an older student ever been mean to you...") This week when I asked it, four or five hands went up. Still more than I'd like but teaching the older kids explicitly that they have the responsibility to care for youngers and then teaching them ways to provide that care does seem to have made a difference.