Salsa
On Friday, we made homemade salsa with our class! The school garden had a TON of tomatillos (essentially they are the only thing we can harvest). With the addition of some tomatoes and jalapenos grown in my CT's home garden, we had all the supplies we needed. The kids had an awesome time and so did their teachers! Every child had a chance to cut up veggies and taste the salsa. We had a nice discussion about homemade versus store-bought food and the kids made a lot of interesting connections that I hope we can explore another time.
Respond to Reading
Something we have really been working on late last week and early this week is how we respond to reading. Essentially, we are trying to get the kids to understand that they have thoughts (or at least, if they are reading the right book) about what they are reading. They make connections, predictions, evaluations, etc. We have given them 10-15 minutes to respond to reading at the end of our reading block. While we give them the power to choose what they write about, we do offer some sentence starters that have seemed to work well. Some of them include:
- I think...
- I felt ______ when _______ .
- I saw...
- I noticed...
- I wonder...
- I hope...
- It was (funny/sad/exciting) when...
Partnerships... To Level or Not to Level
Because it is the beginning of the school year and we've had limited time to assess students (and because it's how our team rolls), most of our groups have been random. We have a "pick stick" jar that nicely randomizes our students for any sort of grouping. We learned a new math game on Monday, called "Magic Mystery Ten." Essentially, you use the A-9 cards, layed out in ten groups face down, with the top card face up. You also set aside two cards without looking at them, the "mystery cards." Partners take turns matching sets of ten. At the end, your mystery cards should either add up to ten themselves or make pairs with your two remaining cards to make ten. Sounds easy, right?
Well, as a 2/3 mixed age group, there can be a wide range in ability from some of our 7's to some of our 9's. As it happened, one of our experienced 3rd graders ended up with The Wanderer. I was sitting at the same table as these two started playing the game. The 3rd grader, E, was upset because TW wasn't adding up the cards correctly, saying that A + 5 made ten. E calmly counted up from 5 to get 6. TW was adding the icons on the cards, including the smaller symbols on the corners (so an A was worth 3). After a short while, I stepped in and had TW count the symbols for me, explaining that only the symbols in the middle were counted. He still wasn't convinced. I let them keep playing because E is a good mentor and I figured that after he saw me scaffold, he might try it as well. Womp womp. Not so much. E's frustration was rising and TW was as obstinate as ever. It was then that I remembered that we had a list of 10's pairs on the board. So, when TW chose one card, I had him find the other on the board. Instead of counting the symbols, he was looking at the numbers. Whew, crisis averted!
This calls to mind an important part of teaching, though, when to put students with learning peers and when to mix it up and have them work with other kids. So far, we've had little time with learning peers and lots of times with other kids. It's been working well- this is the first incident I remember where there was substantial conflict. I do wonder though, does it work all the time?
We went to the School Forest today- I shall post about that tomorrow.
Much love,
BJT
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