Thank you to all parents who were able to join me for Parents' Night. It was great to see you all again and have the opportunity to share our program with you. For anyone who wasn't able to make it, we will hold a Sally Borden Curricular Overview Evening on October 6th. You will learn all about our curricular components in greater depth and see how they work for your child. More details will follow. Also, I'd like to remind parents of the Learning Awareness Conference being held at the Dunn Institute. There are wonderful workshops for parents and teachers providing valuable information for working with students with language based learning differences. I am very excited to be attending and hope to see you there!
In class this week we read and discussed two books: The Lotus Blossom by Tatsuro Kiuchi and Something To Remember Me By by Susan V. Bosak. We practiced a discussion technique called "turn to your partner". Using this technique we would stop at key points in the story to discuss what was happening, predictions we could make, pictures we were making in our minds, and ways in which the story connected to our lives. Later, during whole class discussions, we probed the themes of remembering one's homeland and the experience of being forced from it as well as the process of aging and losing one's memory. The students engaged in wonderfully rich discussion, shared fabulous, insightful ideas, and supported one another's thinking. It was inspiring to witness! I am so proud of them!
In mathematics we explored place value with manipulatives, began our Singapore mathematics program, and worked on cognitive thinking. Today we completed a task of looking at a series of numbers, words or letters, and decided which in the group did not fit. The interesting thing was there was no one answer. Each set contained multiple answers. It was neat to see how we saw things differently or the same and what was our rationale behind our answers. Matthew challenged us with a great riddle to end the lesson!
Our Orton Gillingham groups began this week and we have been writing in our reader's notebooks. The students and I will write letters back and forth in these notebooks to discuss readings in class, and reading they're completing independently. I will check in with them to see how they're using our reading strategies to improve reading comprehension. Our reading program has really taken off.
Ask your child about our concentration basket! We have gathered stress balls, tactile balls, and balloons filled with rice and cornmeal as items we can keep in our hands and massage to help us focus. The students have become very independent in their use and grabbing one when they feel the need to keep their hands busy so they can focus their concentration. To this basket we've also added packets of sugarless gum. Research has shown that mint gum can aid in concentration the act of chewing helps students focus as well. Fifth grade has been amazingly responsible in using the gum and we always spit it out when leaving the classroom. We've done a very mature job of determining when we need the gum and when we do not. Great job, students!
Please remember that Monday is Yom Kippur and school is closed. Enjoy the long weekend everyone and we'll see you next week!
Warmly,
Laura
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