Today the 3rd graders started their day by learning about the anxiety-reducing technique called square-breathing, or box breathing. This can be used anytime, and especially helpful before bed.

Then the students took part in an introspective activity where they rated themselves on scales about all sorts of social-emotional intelligence. You can check out the scales here. They added their rating to a class set of scales and analyzed the data as a group. They noticed where clusters appeared; they thought about whether there were negative or positive sides to the scales or not; and they examined whether they felt compelled to be dishonest when answering despite it being mostly anonymous. The students then imagined how they can use the data to inform their actions in the GATE community, their regular classrooms, and their families.

After morning recess, the students were introduced to Choice Time, a variation of Free Choice from last year. For the first few weeks of Choice Time, the students will be introduced to a handful of different choice options each week so that they understand the options available to them. After the introductory period, students will be able to choose from a limited section of learning activities and creative expression choices to pursue for 20-30 minutes most weeks of GATE. This week's choices were from the game shelf: Rubik's Race, Rush Hour, Boggle, Bananagrams, O! Euclid, Yahtzee, Proof!, Story Cubes, IZZI, a 1000-piece puzzle, or a US states puzzle.

To finish the day, the new GATE students learned about Book Creator, the platform used to create their digital portfolios. We will continue with this work next week!