Reflection....

It's been another action packed week in Room 107!

CLASSROOM COMMUNITY:

We got our white boards and Mr. T and his protege installed them! THANKS So MUCH AGAIN!

So..of course I spent my workday re-arranging the room and re-organizing some of our routines. The kids cubbies are moved to the other side of the room and I have been teaching them to think about our day as soon as they enter the classroom.WITHOUT having to tell them, they figured out that they needed to unstack chairs, sharpen pencils and greet one another before playing a game. We also had hte HVAC unit serviced and cleaned! It looks great and the heat works...so well that we had to turn off hte heat about an hour into the day. I believe it was William who said, "MAN it's hot in here!"

We did a community building lesson on how we can all make our classroom run smoother and how we can all get what we need each day. I asked the students to write about what IS working/what they like and also what ISN'T working. Here's a glimpse of the feedback.

I learned that the kids love me, which I selfishly love to hear! They also love that they have free time to actually play together in the classroom. It amazes me that  they think I am the reason for that, when in fact, it is because they work so hard and complete all of their work each day! They also love Chinese Culture with Wu Laoshi. We have decided to include more of her culture into each of my lessons whenever possible. I also learned that they love math and reading centers. I will work at making our centers even more engaging and challenging (esp in Math).
    I found out that French is hard, which is understandable, so I spoke with them about how it will get easier. They wrote that they wish we had a smart board or projector. I am going to start a donor's choose project to try and raise money for those items. I will provide all of you with the information once I have done so. The idea is not to raise money from all of you, but rather to tap into our collective resources with friends and business owners who are looking to make a tax deductible donation. Even if these items are eventually going to end up in each classroom, there is no reason why our classroom should wait! :)

RESEARCH PROJECTS:
 
   We are beginning our unit on Informational Writing. I learned SOOO SOO MUCH from Lucy Calkins last Friday and I am extremely excited to jump into the unit! Here are the ideas your kids came up with so far:

Wu Laoshi checked out every book from the library we have that are related to our topics. We will be working diligently on our topics and our writing. I may be sending home the writing over the break so that the kids can work on it if they choose. I 'll send more info on that after I see how far we get.

More to come......

Must go grocery shopping....I have one egg and an onion in my kitchen!