Carriage House

February 10, 2023

Barn Owls

Fun with Place Value!

The Barn Owls have been busy learning about place value. Students are becoming familiar with base ten blocks and how to use them. They have learned that “units” equal 1, “longs” equal 10 and “flats" equal 100. They have also learned that there are 10 units in 1 long, and 10 longs in one flat. Kiddos are becoming familiar with the place value chart and working with three digit numbers that use the hundreds, tens and ones place.

While learning about place value, The Barn Owls learned a new game called “Race to a Flat”. The object of the game is to roll two dice and add up your total to determine how many unit blocks you collect during your turn. You take turns, versing a partner, collecting unit blocks along the way. Each time you collect 10 units, you trade them in for a long. When you collect 10 longs, you trade them in for a flat. The first person to make it to a flat first wins the round!

This was a fun way for our kiddos to become familiar with using the base ten blocks, while also practicing their addition skills and place value. For those that needed an additional challenge, they raced to two flats and eventually they will be able to play with subtracting from a flat to get down to zero. There are so many ways this game can be adjusted to give the proper level of challenge to our Barn Owls. We look forward to playing this game again throughout the year with different versions!

Elder Guardians

Reading & Writing

Reading and writing continue to be a huge focus for the Elder Guardians. Students find times to read throughout the day, alone or with friends. They are also talking more about books and sharing book recommendations with each other.

Students are still working on their narrative stories, meeting in small groups for workshops, sharing their stories and giving feedback, and asking for help when they are stuck. Students continue to be at different phases of the writing process, moving on to the next when they are ready.

In January, we added two new activities to our Morning Meeting line up: Math Challenges and People You Should Know About (PYSKA). We rotate between the two, either solving and sharing about different math expressions or learning about someone who has made a difference in the world. Last week, students began leading Morning Meeting. They sign up for a day and then choose if they would like to create a math challenge or research and write about a historical figure. So far, Thea, Walter ZR, and Walter L have created math challenges while Ian and Emanuel taught us about George Lucas and Technoblade (a famous Youtuber). Students lead all parts of the meeting, including greeting everyone, going over the schedule, and calling on Christina to answer questions (there are always many questions!)

Students continue to meet in groups for Number Talks and are also using mathematical thinking during Links and classroom activities. Students practice problem solving in a variety of real-world contexts, often needing to come up with both the question and way of approaching getting to a solution. In all of these spaces, they are practicing making sense of problems, abstract and quantitative reasoning, constructing arguments, critiquing reasoning, using tools, and modeling their thinking. Students also attend to precision when they convey their reasoning on paper and receive feedback on their work. Math games are also a choice during Choice Time, giving students extra practice with skills related to operations and place value.

February 1st was the anniversary of the sit-ins at Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. We continued our exploration of U.S. history by examining this courageous resistance led by four Black students from North Carolina A&T in response to segregation. After examining photographs and watching a video about the Greensboro Sit-In, we watched two videos from Counter Histories, a project of the Southern Foodways Alliance. These helped us see how the actions in Greensboro built upon and led to more efforts, led by Black individuals throughout the South, to overturn segregation. Students reflected on how many people were involved in these acts of resistance, something that feels important in our goal to disrupt the hero narrative that often gets perpetuated in elementary classrooms. They also noticed that white people chose to respond in different ways: some with actions that upheld these unjust laws, such as calling the police or other forms of violence, and others by supporting the protests. Still, others chose to respond by not doing anything. This led to a discussion about the choices we have and that collective resistance depends upon everyone, including those of us with dominant identities.

This month we have also been continuing our exploration of sexuality through the Our Whole Lives curriculum. This workshop has focused on media literacy, with the goal of helping students develop a deeper discernment about what they see in the media. We’ve discussed how aspects of sexuality are ever-present in all kinds of media, from the kinds of relationships depicted in T.V. shows to the ways people with different gender identities are and are not represented in movies. Students continue to ask thoughtful and relevant questions during these workshops, deepening all of our understanding of these topics.

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