Dear Parents, Welcome back from spring break! Our morning was filled with wonderful stories about spring break adventures. I am so happy to hear that the children had plenty of time for play and exploration. Compliments of Bella Nadel, we had a great new surprise today: a new class fish! This came as a great relief being that we lost Katut just before break. After great debate, and a series of votes- almost as complex as the US Presidential election process- our fish has a name: Bubbles. If you are the parent of a boy, you may hear Bubbles referred to as Veruca Salt; many of the boys are not pleased with the election defeat and so our fish may very well develop an identity crisis. Such is the life in J3T... This week we will kick back into high gear with learning, while also preparing for the student led conferences. It's a busy and exciting time in here, full of energy. Here's what's ahead.... Unit Studies: We are continuing our unit on Self Expression that we started before spring break. During this unit,students in J3 will experience a range of authentic artistic experiences. From visual art, through drama, dance, music, poetry, storytelling and beyond, students will be given an opportunity to create their own responses inspired by what they have seen, heard and felt. Off-site visits and in- class visitors and workshops will be used to create genuine experiences. The students will understand what it is to be an artist by considering how other artists work is influenced by their experiences and the world around them. Students will ultimately create their own artistic pieces and be able to explain what feelings they hope to invoke in others as well as being able to identify possible motives in classmates’ work. The Conceptual Learning Purpose of this unit is for learners to understand that …
The Competency Learning Purpose is for learners to be able to...
And to develop the following SKILLS
The Character Learning Purpose is for students to develop the value of appreciation, tolerance, and creativity. Literacy: The children have wrapped up the writing process for their reports of information, and have moved into self reflections and goal setting. They are quite eager to share these with you at the student led conferences, and they should be! The children showed remarkable growth as writers, and have taken an important step of moving from writing about what they know to researching a topic and organizing the gathered information into a structured report. To tie-in with our new unit on Self Expression, our new writing genre is Creative Writing. The students will be writing creative narratives as well as poetry. We will focus on developing the writer's voice, and the craft of writing that includes descriptive writing, dialogue, and developing a plot. In poetry, we will explore various forms of poetry, and how we can use a wide variety of poetic forms to express our thoughts and feelings. Math: I would be surprised if you have not heard about the exciting geometry based project during which the children will use 3D shapes to design and build their own city, aptly names: GeoMetro City. After a series of lessons, the children will earn their building permit and will then select a section of the city to design. You can support our Math learning by identifying 2D and 3D shapes in the every day world. You can also play games wondering what something would look like when viewed from above , or on one side. We will move into talking about area and perimeter as the project unfolds. Please also continue to support your child as they review the times tables until they "know them like they know their name." It is important that the children have mastery of facts up to the nines tables to support the work in division that we will take on after GeoMetro City is complete. Social Emotional Learning To support our unit studies, we will focus in on the happiness habit: Build Into Relationships, with a special focus on being self-aware, and advocating for ourselves. Essentially, we are looking at the relationship we have with ourselves. During this focus time, we will talk about setting and respecting personal boundaries. We will then explore how, by knowing ourselves and being confident in what makes us unique, we can be tolerant and appreciate the differences in others. I have found Sarri Gilman and Brené Brown's work on boundaries to be very helpful as I plan for these discussions with the students. I will share two of her videos with you here, as you may find this to be helpful, as well! (These are not videos that I will share with the children- they are just for you!) Dates to Remember:
That's it from me! I look forward to seeing all of you during student led conferences. Yours in Learning and Growing, Erin M. Threlfall
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SnapshotsA peek at life inside of J3T , curated by Ms. Erin M. Threlfall Archives
June 2016
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