Look at All We Do!

Over the last two weeks, we have spent a great deal of time creating a reflection of our learning during our Who We Are Unit of Inquiry.  To demonstrate what the Explorers have learned they created a poster that showcased what they are like, how they have changed and how they connected to others (peers or book characters).  Our fantastic communicators have been presenting their work as well!  

Here is a sneak peak of our next Unit of Inquiry:

Our Explorers will begin leading this learning experience next week.  

Filled with wonder, filled with questions and uncovering our own answers!

Take a look at our researchers in action!  

Using our thinking skills in so many ways!

Patrick wrote a fantastic book at home and shared it with his class!

Eloise created a  fun illustration of an equation!

We are working on an auction item for the One World Event with Lily, Owen and Kai's mom!

Magical Mandarin

Our Zoo trip was so much fun and definitely full of great wonderings!!  

In Mandarin we are learning about animals too.  Mrs. Snyder's class even took a virtual trip to the National Zoo (Washington D.C.) to visit the Giant Panda.  

Here is the link if you would like to visit the zoo too! Giant Panda Cam  

Lights, Camera, Action!

The Beacon Street Theater came for a visit this week to share a message about the importance of being caring.  Many of our Explorers were chosen to act out parts too!

Thank you, thank you, thank you Mystery Readers!!

Upcoming Events:

Fall Festival is today!!  We are sure looking forward to seeing you there.  The Book Fair will be open today too.
Rosemary Wells visit-Wednesday (10/30)
Playhouse Square Field Trip-Wednesday (10/30)
Book Character Parade-Thursday (10/31)
Student-led Conferences-Beginning of Nov. 

A Few Classroom Favorite iPad Applications:

Montessori Crosswords (sounding out and building words)
Letter School (writing)
Picture D2D (ordering numbers dot-to dot)
Memory Train (Thinking)

Book Character Parade

Readers, readers everywhere!  Our book character parade is coming up quickly, October 31.  It is so much fun to share our favorite books, and to get ideas of some new books we might like to read too.

Has your child chosen a book character they would like to represent yet?  Here are some examples from the past:

Your child will get the opportunity to share their book character and explain what Learner Profile Attribute best represents that character and why.

Attributes:

Caring                                  Open-minded                       Principled
Courageous (Risk-taker)          Inquirer                                Thinker
Knowledgeable                       Balanced                               Reflective                   Communicator

We sure are looking forward to this exciting day.  Please let us know if you have any questions!

Learning, Growing, Changing, Connecting

We finished all our Me Bag Presentations

Our Unit of Inquiry, Who We Are, is wrapping up this week.  We have spent the last 6 weeks looking at what we are like (Form), how we have changed (Change) and how we connect to book characters and our friends (Connection).  Through all of this we have learned so much about our uniqueness but also have learned to see and appreciate the uniqueness of other people and things.  It is amazing how our Explorers can be in the middle of a lesson on numbers and yell out, "Well, that's it form" or as we act out adding and subtracting stories, "That was change!"  As we read our   connections continue. The students attach the an attribute of the Learner Profile or an attitude or they will argue a key concept they feel could be applied.  They are always thinking! The way our lessons interconnect in all areas is so exciting.  This deep thinking about our learning is tremdous (Note: we have only been in school 36 days!).

We love to act stories out with Me Puppets

Math Inquiries:

Showing all the ways we can express a number!
We are so knowledgeable!

10 Frame Fun-Looking at the form of numbers and relating it to the 10 frame

We have been working on the terms greater than, more than, less than, longer, shorter, equal.
Can your child look at this and share all they know?

Wonderful Writing:

We are communicators (attribute)!  We can share what we know in a variety of ways and writing is just one of them.  We write all day!  We express our thinking in our wonder journals, our daily journals, problem solving notebooks...  

Wondering about our classroom pumpkin investigations.

Working on letter formation.

Sharing reasoning in her Problem Solving Notebook

Reading, Reading, Reading

We love to read.  

The Nice Club sharing How Have You Filled Someone's Bucket.

We enjoyed Loren Long's book Otis as we read for the Record with other's in the US.  We are still waiting to see if we broke the World Record for the number of people reading the same book across the country.

Curling up with a good book is a favorite thing to do!

Other Fun

Patrick is teaching Mrs. Humphrey how to use Google Maps.  So Knowledgeable!

Pumpkin Investigation in Mrs. Snyder's class.  We are looking carefully at form and change.

Describing the pumpkin (Form):

Does a pumpkin sink or float  Why?

Adding soil all those seeds and waiting for a change!

We put this pumpkin in a clear jar and are watching it Change.
Ask your child what it looks like today.  Crazy!

We are enjoying the changes outside too.  Our new stage was a great place to have our music class on a beautiful fall day.

We love our Mystery Readers.  Thank you for joining us!!

Character Parade:
Soon we will be celebrating our favorite book characters.  Our Explorers are asked to reflect on their favorite character and what Learner Profile Attribute best represents the character.  They may dress up as that book character for our parade on October 31.    They will get to present their book, and dressed up self and be asked to explain which attribute they feel best describe the character and why.  It is always a great, fun day!