Carriage House @Randolph

10/17/22

Barn Owls

Writing Connects Us: Pen Pal Project

As we enter the final stage of the writing process with our pet rock stories, we are beginning again in such an incredibly exciting way - as pen pals to new friends on another continent! We have the privilege of connecting with a group of 15 students from the COBURWAS school at the Kyangwali refugee settlement in Uganda. Our prewriting process has revolved around learning to ask good questions that will open up rich conversations. We have been following the principles of the Question Formulation Technique, in which we explore divergent and convergent thinking, learn to flip questions from open ended to close ended, and prioritize questions based on their relevance to our goals. We are looking forward to a Zoom meeting with our new friends next week, in which pen pal pairs will get to greet each other face to face and launch this project with big smiles! Stay tuned, and please check out the websites linked below to learn more!

Morning Meeting: Learning in Community

Our Morning Meeting has been evolving over the past few weeks. We have moved away from our mood tokens and have taken to showing 1, 2, 3 or 4 fingers. One finger represents the “lowest mood”, 4 being the highest. We have been discussing how our number can represent a fraction or percent. We are working on our math language skills of one quarter/25 percent, two quarters/one half/50 percent, three quarters/75 percent and four quarters/one whole/100 percent. From there kiddos have the option to give a one sentence explanation as to why they have chosen their number. This allows them to practice using those math terms, but also to practice putting together a complete sentence that includes the word “because” to expand their thoughts. For example, “I am at 100 percent today because I am really excited about the book I am writing during choice time.” During this time teachers are also beginning to take a step back, allowing the students to practice self regulation and interpersonal skills without adult prompting. The Barn Owls are learning that after they share their thoughts, rather than a teacher calling on the next person, they can choose and pass onto another student by making eye contact and giving a nod of their head. This seed has been planted in our Morning Meetings, but our intent is that as we water this seed, it will become part of our class culture where the students and teachers are more equal counterparts.

We have also been working on learning to read an analog clock. We started by making the connection of our four quarters we have been using in our mood readings and have come to know that clocks also deal with quarters. From there we started introducing questions like, “If it is 8:55 now and we start our morning work at 9:00, how much time is left until we start our morning work?” These questions will gradually get harder as we become more familiar with how a clock works.

For our weather report, we have started to use a number line to find the difference between our high and low temperatures. This is just one more tool in our “toolbox” of what we can use to find the difference between two numbers. We also use this time to discuss proper gear to be comfortable for the temperatures. We have been encouraging The Barn Owls to take ownership of their morning routines and dressing appropriately for the weather. If you notice your child asking about the weather report, be aware they are making good on their end of the bargain! Please support them in checking weather reports and gearing up appropriately for our days spent outside.

Elder Guardians

Ways We Want our Learning Community to Be:

We work together to figure things out and do things we couldn’t do alone, asking for help when we need it.

We keep calm and focused when we need to be.

We observe the things around us and respond accordingly.

We respect each other's decisions, words, feelings, bodies, and work.

Teamwork, Collaboration and Community

The Elder Guardians have been continuing our exploration of who we are with a focus on who we want to be as a class community. We began by reading this story about how geese work together to fly south for the winter, extending their individual abilities and taking care of each other along the way. Some Elder Guardians felt that this kind of teamwork and collaboration would be really difficult for us humans, but we’re going to try anyway!

Using the cooperation and care of the geese as a model, we began to identify values that are important to our community. First, students thought about which values are the most important to them. Then, we looked at each other's work, trying to figure out which values were showing up again and again. We chose those to be the Elder Guardian Values. They are: fun, joy, nature, creativity, family, love, respect, imagination, Learning and Teamwork. Next, we spent time looking at what these values look, feel, and sound like in action. From there, we created Community Norms. These are ways of being together that we have all agreed to in order to live up to our values as best we can.

Hispanic Heritage Month

Harvesting Hope

We’ve also been celebrating Hispanic Heritage month by learning about important Hispanic, Latine, and Chicano people in history. We started by watching a video about Antonia Pantoja, an Puerto Rican educator and organizer who fought for bilingual education in NYC public schools. We read “Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez” and learned about farmworker organizing in California in the 1960’s. The text focused on Chavez’s life and contributions to the movement. Next, we read non-fiction texts about Larry Itliong and Dolores Huerta, organizers integral to both the Delano Grape Strike and the formation of UFW. We talked about the author’s choice to leave out those individuals from the first book, beginning to compare and contrast texts about one event in history. In these reading activities, we’re beginning to practice identifying if a text is fiction or nonfiction, close reading for deeper understanding, and taking notes for later use.

Making our Mathematical Thinking Visible

Last but not least, we are in the full swing of Randolph Math! On top of using many math skills during Links, students have been meeting in Number Talk groups everyday to practice mental math skills. We’ve also created Elder Guardian math groups which meet twice a week. In these groups, we’re working on solving problems that involve multiple steps. We’re learning to slow down when reading the question, making sure we understand what is being asked and the order of operations. We’re also focusing on showing our work and explaining our process to others.

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