Our class has been bringing in many coins and even cash to help the students at Hobby Elementary School in Texas. Thank you to all of you who contributed. It's a great opportunity to help someone in need and to see how when we work collectively, we can make a big impact. I'm hoping we will find out the total received next week.
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Our class has been bringing in many coins and even cash to help the students at Hobby Elementary School in Texas. Thank you to all of you who contributed. It's a great opportunity to help someone in need and to see how when we work collectively, we can make a big impact. I'm hoping we will find out the total received next week. After about a month of quietly walking down hallways and showing good focus in class, our class decided to celebrate the "full cotton ball jar" with a campout lunch. Other behavior rewards include high fives/monthly lunches and hoots, a whole-school reward system. Mrs. FitzPatrick and Ms. Davis are visiting each classroom sharing an important message about looking at others with eyes of kindness. Mrs. FitzPatrick's lesson included a read-aloud, thoughtful discussion, personal reflection, and creation of a puzzle piece which fits with the others in the class to create a mural. This mural, along with the murals created by each of the other classes, will be on display at Open House. There has been a lot of enthusiasm during writing time. Students have enjoyed composing their thoughts and ideas, most days on laptops. Most of their entries have been narrative in nature. Some have required a more imaginative approach. After skill-building and idea-generating, students write quietly for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then a few students share their writing with the class and receive specific, positive feedback from classmates. Often, after whole-class sharing, those who want to share with a partner are given time to do so. This week, fifth grade teachers synchronized the reading of a fake District 25 PTA letter explaining changes to be made to field trips, parties, and more. Thinking about these changes helped students experience the tyranny of the British rule over the colonists in the 1700's. The class' reactions to the letter were to strike, write letters, get people to sign petitions, and "take them to court." Though the exercise only lasted for a short time, I hope the memory of this experience will carry them through our study of this time period in history. |
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