Starting the week off right!

I don't have a lunchtime duty this week so I'm going to try writing as much of the blog as I can during this time. I had some kiddos eat lunch with me but they're at recess now.

We have a new student! L came this morning so we've been taking a step back to try and show her all the ins and outs of Arrow and our homeroom.

In academic block, in Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus, we found out what was in the desk and the missing picture and guess what?? Aven found her birth mother-sort of. While reading, we wrote down Aven's thoughts, words, actions, feelings, etc. that are helping her to change over time. Then, students had a chance to do their own characterization of the main character in the book they are currently reading. We also turned in our final drafts today. I can't wait to see the elevation of their writing based on their revisions and peer editors.
We spent our final day simulating weathering, erosion and testing out our 'prototypes' for reducing these processes. We uploaded videos of this to Flipgrid-have them show you and explain it to you!

In math today, we took our post-test over factors, multiples, multiplication and division. Overall, their scores increased from their pre-tests, however, I wasn't overly pleased with the level of security so we will continue to practice multiplication as the year moves on.

In meeting, we shared about our weekend in 5 words or less. This made this part of our meeting go super fast! This also creates questions in their minds to later ask their peers. We also shared what we want to accomplish this week and how we plan to do this. Unfortunately, many didn't take this seriously so we're going to try again tomorrow. Hopefully, tomorrow, we'll get goals for the week and action plans for how to be successful.

After lunch, recess and quiet time, we read the book, Dreaming Up, about how our modeling and creating as kids with blocks and such can someday become something bigger. Then we played with legos and created. We'll continue working with this and "dreaming up" our designs throughout the week.