Today the 4th 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.

Students were then introduced to some new features on their digital Book Creator Portfolios and then tested them out by anonymously creating a circle map about some of their interests. The class then tried to match their classmates to the circle maps as a game.

Before heading to lunch, 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, a 1000-piece puzzle, or a US states puzzle.

In the afternoon, we got started with our theme-introduction unit on Ethics. This year, all of the units we study will be connected back to this Universal Theme. The students journaled in their portfolio to the following prompt: A kind alien from another galaxy asks you to explain how you know if something is fair. Write a paragraph letting them know how you know if something is fair. 

After writing, a couple students role played as Zolorb the friendly alien while students shared their responses to the question! The students identified that they are at the Surface level of learning about ethics and the essential question of "What is fair?" You can see some of the key words we pulled out of the alien explanations in a photo below. It will be interesting to revisit this activity at the end of our ethics unit to see how the 4th graders' understanding of fairness has deepened over the course of the unit.

Each student also got to help me clean out old books from my classroom library by picking a book as a beginning of year gift. We finished the day with the reflection stem of "Something I will tell _______ about today when I get home is _______." So feel free to ask your student what they wanted to share!