During the first week of school, I asked the kids - What does it mean to "live together differently?" Some kids thought it referred to the fact that we're all different, yet we all have to get along. Others thought it referred to the idea that our classroom would be a different place - a place where we would learn and live together in different ways. They're both right. In order to explore this idea more fully, we read picture books each day that spoke to this idea of "living together differently." After sharing each book, we held a discussion and came up with several big ideas we learned. We came up with nearly a hundred ideas, but the following video shares our top 24 ideas we learned about how we live together differently in Room 241...
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Living Together Differently
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Best and Worst Reading Times
How do we author our own reading lives? Who do we want to be as readers? These are the questions we've been asking ourselves this week. To understand these questions, we looked back into our past. We thought about our best and worst reading times. Here is a sample of responses from the kids.
Worst Times:
- Reading out loud and messing up in front of everybody. It was embarrassing.
- Reading the book and having to answer the questions.
- Book reports (boring!)
- When I tried to read a chapter and I didn't understand one word.
- When we had to answer the questions in our reading book after a story.
- When you're not comfortable or you get distracted.
- When you stumble over words.
Best Times:
- When I did not want to put my book down.
- When I'm in a comfortable spot.
- Reading when you have a snack.
- If time flies when you're reading.
- When you can't be bothered.
- Silent reading.
- Book groups.
- When I can picture what I read.
- Buddy reading.
- When the teacher reads aloud to us.
- When I can find books that I love.
After sharing this information, we talked about what we want our classroom to be like. We want to be a group of kids who have choice in our reading - we want to choose interesting, just-right books. We want to be a classroom that talks about books and shares books with our friends. We want to be in a classroom where we can be comfortable and free from distractions. We want to be a class who reads a lot and understands what we read (although we're not really into answering lots of comprehension questions). What are your best and worst times for reading? We'd love to hear your thoughts!
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Categorizing Our Rules
I posted earlier about our classroom hopes and dreams. After discussing all our dreams, we brainstormed rules that would help us accomplish these dreams. We brainstormed over a hundred rules, but we decided that would be too many. We decided to narrow our rules down to our top four or five. We began by categorizing our rules into four main groups: How We Treat Ourselves, How We Treat Others, How We Treat Property, and How We Do Our Best. It was a fun classifying activity, and each group looked at our set of rules a little bit differently. It led to a lot of interesting conversation among our groups. After even more discussion, each group chose their most important rule from each category. I'm currently in the process of compiling these rules to our top four or five. Here are some pictures of the small groups categorizing and discussing our classroom rules.
Who Borrowed Mr. Bear?
We started off our year in science with a mystery - Who borrowed Mr. Bear? This activity came complete with a crime scene, clues, suspects, and experiments. The kids have had an incredible time piecing together the clues, while at the same time learning about observation, inference, and the scientific process. I was able to snap just a few pictures today. Here are some of our kids at work...
Adding with Base Ten Blocks
After spending our first week of math workshop playing games and figuring out puzzles, I wanted to spend this week using base ten blocks. Yesterday in class, we used base ten blocks to demonstrate our understanding of regrouping in addition. Most kids know to start by adding the ones place, and sometimes you have to "carry the one." But it's not really a "one," is it? It's really a ten. And when kids add the tens place, they often times have to "carry the one" over to the hundreds place. But it's not really a "one" - it's really a hundred. The base ten blocks gave us a concrete understanding of this concept. I'm always pushing for kids to understand the WHY behind math. I want us to go beyond the procedures and steps and really develop a conceptual understanding of how numbers work. Below are some pictures of our kids at work.
Our First Week
Our first week was filled with fun activities. Here are our kids talking about their favorite parts of our first week together...
Hopes and Dreams
I used to start off the school year explaining my rules to the class. But for the past two years, I've tried something different. Instead of charging ahead with rules, I ask students to think about their hopes and dreams for the school year. What do they want to accomplish this year? It has to be a goal that is realistic, achievable, and school related. Our kids brainstormed LOTS of dreams, and then each one selected one important goal. We then studied these goals and asked ourselves, "What rules do we need to have in order to help us reach our dreams?" This brought about a great discussion about the rules we want for our room - not rules for rules' sake - but rules that help us achieve our goals. I think there's a big difference there. Below you'll find each student's hope or dream. We have big goals for this year!
Welcome!
Welcome to the Room 241 classroom blog! It's the start of a new school year, and I'm excited to get our blog going again. You'll find videos, photos, podcasts, and student work on our blog - it's a chance to get a "peek" inside our classroom. Our kids LOVE hearing your comments to our posts. If you don't know how to leave a comment, check out the short video tutorial I made - it's very easy. Thanks for joining in the conversation - we look forward to sharing our learning with you this year!
