What a frightfully frigid Friday! Thankfully, we were thinking hard enough that we barely noticed.
In our voting today, we tried to decide if we would want to be friends with Charlotte or not. Timo thought it was important to remember that Charlotte killed the spider so she could live, not to be mean. Bisola agreed and said that whether she would be friends with the someone depended on if they were nice or not, not on if they were a spider. Sokrates stressed that it was a good thing to get along with people, so maybe we should give spiders a chance. Yianni thought that Wilbur should give Charlotte a chance, as he thought that maybe the goose or the other animals were trying to get Wilbur to leave and he could use all the friends he could get. As we were talking it over, Tove realized that she had put her vote in the wrong column and moved it, but Teddy pointed out that moving it left an empty spot in the column and made it look bigger than it was. When they were getting ready to write it up in their journals, a lot of the class talked about how close the vote was (5 to 4) and why it was closer. Anja pointed out how she could write Charlotte down because it was written in the question. In just a week, I have seen them get much more thoughtful in their discussions, intuitively understanding how to use bar graphs, and even start campaigning for their team in order to get votes. I can’t wait to see how they develop next week!
In our read-aloud, we got to experience a wonderful summer day, which was great on this blustery day. We also got to see the goose’s eggs hatch, except for one dud. Templeton the rat took the rotten egg, which all the other animals explained was going to smell terrible. As you can imagine, everybody was excited to draw what they thought the egg would look and smell like.
In our skeleton wrap up, we made a side-by-side picture of an animal or person and their skeleton. Timo laughed and pointed out how easy the snake would be. Sokrates noticed that his jacket had a skull on it that would help him with the skeleton. Anja was frustrated that the straight q-tips couldn’t make a round skull, but she realized the cotton balls would be perfect, especially if she used a marker to draw in the teeth. Teddy wanted to do a turtle and figured that the shell on it would be made out of bone too, since it was hard. Our development in talking and reasoning about bones is nothing short of shocking!
In our final building height series challenge, we measured our building’s height with yardsticks. Jerome offered to measure the height of others’ towers. Rebecca had a breakthrough and suggested to Gia that they lay their blocks on their side. Gia agreed and pointed out that they could even move it around without falling over. Anja did point out, however, that the design used a lot more blocks, which was a challenge when multiple groups were building at once (that’s why Bisola decided to wait until everyone else was done and she had all the space and blocks she could want). Teddy did think they had a good idea, however, and suggested that he and Jerome build in the same way. Tove liked measuring with the yardstick, even counting the inches on it. We discussed our measurements afterwards and realized that we needed to use a ton of cubes, a few rulers, and only one or two yardsticks. We’re not quite sure why this happens, but it is interesting to think about.
We also were lucky enough to use two gifts to our classroom that everyone really enjoyed. Teddy gave the class a new game, Snug as a Bug, which everyone really enjoyed playing. We also have several students checking out everything in the classroom through the handheld microscope Niki gave the class (Tove even looked at my hair through the microscope, which was pretty hilarious. “Mr. Chris, you do have hair! I can see it now!”). Thank you so much to all of you. It was so great coming back this week to your smiles and your excitement to learn.
Two quick reminders. One, it is a three day weekend, so I will see all of you on Tuesday. Two, School Choice Week is coming up, so make sure to keep an eye out for your scarves from last year. Have a great weekend and see all of you next week!
