Inspiration

What a wonderful week of arts and culture! Not only was it Authorfest week, but we had a special visit from a group of Mexican visiting artists. On Thursday, the library became a workshop and gallery for Ventura Fabian, his partner, Norberto, and their translator, Nina. For over an hour, we learned about the ancient Oaxacaan art of wood carving. Our visitors shared the process, the tradition, and the ways that they get inspiration for their work. In addition, we learned about their home village in Oaxaca, Mexico, their families, traditions, and way of life. It was an amazing experience!

On Friday, we had the opportunity to listen to author and illustrator, Erik Kraft, share about his crafts. He told us about his life-long interest in writing, how he gets inspired, and the process of his writing. It was reaffirming to hear that he goes through much the same process that we do, including the generation of ideas, brainstorming, editing, and publishing.

Students are continuing to research their Mexican topics. Next week we will begin to plan our research projects, which will demonstrate what we have learned.

Thank you for the thoughtful planning you are doing with your children around our Haiti service learning project. I want to share with you all that Friends Academy is being recognized this weekend by the UMASS Haitian-American Student Association for our ongoing support of Ecole Soleil. I shared this news with the students and they were surprised and excited. I am so proud of their compassion, empathy, and integrity.

Coming Up . . .

Next week will be a short one as Thanksgiving Break begins on Wednesday, November 24th. We'll look forward to being back together in school on Monday, November 29th.

We will be taking a Field Trip to a traditional Mexican restaurant, El Rancho Grande, in Providence on Tuesday, November 30th. We can have one parent chaperone for this trip. Please let me know if you are interested as soon as possible.

Our Mexican Fiesta will take place on Wednesday, December 8th from 11-12:30. Children will demonstrate their learning and then we will enjoy a buffet-style Mexican meal together. Please save the date!

Enjoy the photos, and have a joyful weekend.

Warmly,

Lee

A Short Week

This was a short but productive week. We:

*Chose our topics for our Mexico research projects and started formulating our research questions.

*Watched a video about Mexican life and made a Venn diagram comparing our days with those of the children featured in the video.

*Finished chapter one in Santiago's Silver Mine.

*Completed our writing about our Day of the Dead altars.

*Learned about renaming in subtraction.

*Began thinking about our Haiti service learning projects.

Dates to Remember:

Monday 11/15-Friday 11/19:

Book Fair

Thursday 11/18, 6:30-7:30:

An Evening with Sports Journalist and Author Steve Krasner

Friday 11/19:

Authorfest and Luncheon

11/24-11/28:

Thanksgiving Break

Have a wonderful, LONG weekend!

:)Lee

Small Moment Stories

Happy Friday everyone! We have had a wonderful week here in SBS 3. Children have been busily reading, writing, and computing.

In writing workshop, students have published their first personal narratives. This is the culmination of lots of work and creative inspiration. Each of these stories is based upon a "small moment" in the children's lives. Each student identified the setting, main characters, the wish, the problem, the turning point, and the message in these small moments before beginning to write. Using the computer program Kidspiration, they webbed their ideas and then sequenced the story from beginning, to middle, to end. After editing and expanding their sentences, children illustrated the story using another computer program called Kid Pix. Finally, each student recorded their narration of their small moment story on their laptop. Soon we will post this work to our blog. In addition, take a moment to look in your child's writing folders in the classroom to see the various stages of writing and editing.

In reading workshop, we are in the middle of the first chapter of Santiago's Silver Mine. This novel is set in Mexico in an old mining village. The main characters of the story are two boys, Santiago and Andreas, who are trying to help their families make ends meet due to a poor harvest year. In their attempts, they encounter much adventure and become embroiled in a mystery that needs solving. As we read the story, we are answering comprehension questions in writing. This process can be tricky and I am doing a lot of modeling. For each question, we highlight words in the question that we need to include in our answer to make it "complete." I have been very impressed with the kids work!

In math, we have continued to work on addition with renaming into the hundreds place. Next week we will begin subtraction with renaming.

This week we also began our Read Naturally program. While the main focus of this program is to build oral reading fluency, we will also use the stories to build reading comprehension by answering questions about the passage read, as well as to build vocabulary. This week and next, we will be practicing the steps involved in our Read Naturally program. Eventually, students will be bringing their ipods home to work on this each night as part of homework.

Dates to Remember

Tuesday 11/9: Pizza Day!

Thursday 11/11: Veteran's Day (No School)

Friday 11/12: Faculty Professional Day (No School)

11/15-11/19: AuthorFest and Book Fair

11/24: Thanksgiving Break Begins

HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND!

:)Lee