WOW! We just closed the
doors on the 2nd quarter (wrapped-up the 1st semester) of
the school year. Let me just say that
these 4th graders are ON FIRE!
Seriously. We started our STAR
tests and the results so far show good growth.
We went a little deeper with our classification of living things sort. We created a foldable to show the scientific
classification of an animal of our own choosing. Next week we will begin to do some animal
research to lead up to an animal report.
As I evaluate each and every day there are some common themes for the
good days and common characteristics of the not so good days. See if these make sense:
1-
We want our days to be HAPPY!
2-
We want to be part of the group.
This week we had some days that I left school
celebrating---like floating on clouds celebrating. There were also a couple of days where I left
thinking, “what do I need to do differently because we cannot have another day
like that?” What happened on the days
that we all left feeling happy? It
wasn’t that everything went our way. We
just chose to remember the good pieces.
I really believe this. There were
still rough parts of the happy days but somehow I chose to celebrate the way
that Student A said, “thank you,” for something. I chose to appreciate the time that Student B
had worked on quality work. I chose to
acknowledge the great STAR scores and XTRAMATH progress that we had in our
classroom. What about the part of the
group thing? Well….that is definitely a
little trickier with 4th graders.
I saw it happen in an amazing way this week. Students were so excited about learning how a
scale works on Monday. Then we had more
questions about other electronics and things with circuit boards. Students were excited to offer things from
home: tools, broken electronics,
hangers, yarn, etc. There was evidence of mutual respect and
excitement about learning. Everyone was
included and students felt like they needed to do what was being done. In Native American cultures belonging was so
important. Ella Doria, anthropologist,
said, “Be related, somehow, to everyone you know.” We are a family in this fabulous 4th
grade classroom. The good days are
definitely the ones where we choose happy and we include everyone. Enough of my rambling---get out there and
enjoy this LONG weekend!
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