Today the Lower Elementary class were privy to the week-long mystery of “The Case of the Missing Architecture Structures”. Estee emailed me on Tuesday to ask if I had moved the bin containing 12 site plans and 12 cardboard bases with hoop enclosures. The children had been working on them for a few weeks. The designs were a small prototype of the life-sized growing vine home that we will building outside on the playground for the next several weeks.

Wednesday and Thursday brought searches through the building, more emails and pictures circulating through Acera without any leads. Today at morning meeting, after sharing the story, the children wanted to solve the mystery themselves! Armed with clipboards, pencils, and many theories, we questioned and searched. We followed up with leads, and several children spent the better part of snack and recess continuing to take notes.

While the mystery is still unsolved, the LE students are ready and able to theorize about the possible reasons for the disappearance. In addition, they are excited about building the life-sized structure on the playground during the warmer weather to come!

Math

After the April break we have begun an open exploration of place value using many different manipulatives. The overwhelming favorite has been using money… pennies, dimes, 1 dollar bills and a ten-dollar bill. The children roll a die to see how many pennies to take from the “bank”. When they reach ten pennies, they need to say “STOP” and trade for one dime. They continue to add pennies, trade for dimes, and when they reach 10 dimes they can trade for a dollar. An extension of this game will be for the children to have ten dollars and to “spend” it subtracting a little at a time until they reach zero.

Having a deep understanding of place value will help the children as they work with bigger and bigger numbers and explore the operations of multiplication and division. We have been working with these operations in large and small groups, as well as individually. The children’s strong and steady progress in math will be fun to share at Conference Day, May 21st.

Writing and Reading

There have been many themes bubbling up in Writing Workshop this week. The maze work continues to be of interest, but making pop-up books and books with little envelopes with secret messages has also been popular. The creation of information books, “The Book of Leaves and Flowers” will inspire many. The students have also been exposed to nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs and the use of the corresponding symbols. This has helped greatly when adding detail and excitement into the writing. “The train thundered down the track!” sounds much more interesting than, “This is a train.”!

Writing notes to me and classmates has been a bustling activity all throughout the day. Today during Choice Time, I was given a clue… the first part of a scavenger hunt with clues and messages leading me to a tiny tree house with a present of a mini-notebook for my mini-Jen. The fluency and practical (fun) use of writing is just what we want to see from our K’s and 1’s!!

During Cozy Cubby Book Time, when children can read or rest, a book club has been working on using expression. Reading out loud with expression is the biggest predictor of reading comprehension. During the read-aloud children will read text in quotations, and naturally self-correct when they understand the meaning of the character’s words. This comprehension “fine-tuning” is a wonderful way to end the year in book clubs.

Theme

Measuring, building, imagining, problem-solving and persevering with challenges has been a continuing theme in the Lower Elementary Class. With this focus the children have developed a “can-do” attitude that has expanded to “I am an expert and I can teach you if you want.” This week we had expert “bicycle drawers”, “stair constructors”, “word spellers”, and “fort builders”. These skills are essential, as are the fine/gross motor strength and coordination that the students are developing through these fun and engaging activities. All the “hands-on” learning has made all the difference in the explosion of storytelling and writing.

Happy Weekend,

Ms. Jen