Monday Update and Class Meeting!

Today, we had our first Class Meeting. In the past, class meeting may have been an opportunity to discuss issues that have come up in the classroom, which we will still do; however, we will also use class meetings as an opportunity for students to learn leadership, to learn how a business meeting is run, and to propose events for our class. The meetings will have a student leader each week, as well as a meeting recorder who takes minutes. Students can add items to the weekly agenda and make motions to discuss certain issues. Today I modelled how to be the leader of the meeting, and next week I will ask someone to run the meeting in my place. We formed committees to take action on our discussion, so the Halloween and Gingerbread House committees will present their ideas around those two events next week.

Students also did a Think, Pair, Share activity. Rather than have everyone read all articles on the nervous, urinary, endocrine, and immune systems, as well as an article about the skin, we broke into groups with 5-6 students per article. They had to read it, highlight it (and students were reminded that highlighting does not equal painting the paper yellow, but only indicating the important information), and then meet with their group members to figure out how to share information with the class. All of the articles can be found on the Kids Health website. We will present these tomorrow.

Ms. Carson from the Advanced Learning Team came to visit us as students demonstrated the Question Formulation Technique. Students used the technique to brainstorm questions about our unit focus statement. When asked what they enjoyed about the activity, students said they thought it was interesting how many questions were asked, how they came up with so many deeper questions, and how hard it is to not give commentary (or value) to particular questions. Many of them liked the fact that questions were not judged and were instead just collected, as it allowed them to feel more like sharing. They showed a strong understanding of closed and open questions, which will help us as we get into more independent research.

For the afternoon, students did another journal entry, and we went over journal criteria together. This criteria can be found for your information under Notices and Forms.

Then we completed part 2 of our art project we started on Friday. They demonstrated their math measurement and geometry skills by cutting twelve, square panels from their art produced Friday and then evenly spacing them on a piece of black paper. It was encouraging to see students helping one another as they shared knowledge of how to use measurement tools to make perfect squares. These are now displayed above our whiteboard, and the class is looking more personalized every day!

As students finished, they also completed any work left from their Body Stations packet, which is due to Ms. DeTerra on Friday.

No homework today; however, agendas need to be signed, scholastic orders are due Friday, and forms from the office (the student verification form and larger packet sent Friday) are due ASAP. Students are collecting money for the Terry Fox run this Friday, and the suggested donation is at least $1. Reminder: the Carnival is this Thursday! And our Parent Night has been changed from this Thursday to October 8th. Please do see me during office hours tomorrow, 3-4:30 PM, if you would like to speak with me.