Greetings All-
Congratulations on making it through the first full week, which always feels like a bit of a marathon. Even still, I encountered engaged students throughout the building. Students are beginning to form new friendships and gain greater familiarity with routines thanks to your hard work!
Thank you to…
The Fourth Grade Team for providing time for our very first excellent emcees to prepare and Aedin and Carrie for helping with the planning and for providing the music for the gathering. For those of you who don’t know, Open the Circle was commonly sung at the Blue School and it seemed fitting to add it to our song repertoire.
Reminders/Requests:
A question that came up at our one day workshop with Responsive Classroom was Morning Meeting structure and calendar, days in school etc. routines. It is best to do a Morning Meeting (greeting, share, group activity and morning message) separate from math routines. Some times that teachers do math routines are before or after math lessons or during a bit of extra time during the day such as waiting for a specialist to arrive or for lunch to begin. I imagine others have suggestions that they can share at our faculty meeting.
Morning Meetings should not be very long at the beginning of the year. The general rule is that students can sit as many minutes as their age. (I find it’s longer for read alouds). This means that lessons and meetings should not be much longer than seven minutes for a seven year old or nine minutes for a fourth grader. This varies from class to class and child to child, but it always helps me with my planning and expectations with students. You may find that students can do a greeting and morning message and that’s all right now. The First Six Weeks of School is helpful for this type of timing and a resource for group activities and greetings that work well at the beginning of the year.
Below are two Morning Meeting articles if you want to learn more or get ideas. Also, specialists, our Responsive Classroom consultant shared that he runs his Science class with a Morning Meeting structure in mind, giving students a message of what will happen in the class and time to share about their learning at the end. As always, I’m happy to answer questions!
Upcoming Dates:
*Grade level agendas are attached. Please add to the agenda and keep notes of what was discussed/planned
Monday, 9/18:
Tuesday, 9/19:
Wednesday, 9/20:
Thursday, 9/21:
Friday, 9/22:
Next week:
Lindsey’s Schedule this Week:
Lindsey’s Visit:
For the grades that Lindsey is meeting with, please bring your student work from the math baseline assessment so you all can study the work and start planning for how to best structure your math time.
| 9:05 – 10:10 | Meet with 2nd grade (Shalom please join if you are available) |
| 10:10 – 10:30 | 4th Grade – I’d love to come see your calendar routine! Let me know if this time works 🙂 |
| 11:05 – 11:50 | Meet with 4th grade (Charissa please join if you are available) |
| 11:50 – 12:50 | Meet with 3rd grade
(Shalom & Charissa please join if you are available) |
| 1:20 – 2:25 | Meet with 1st Grade
(Harriet please join if you are available) |
Joke of the Week:
What do you call cheese that’s not yours?
Answer: Nacho cheese. (Archie, grade 2 and Savior, grade 3)
Have a great week!