Teaching, Learning & Playing with Purpose

Student Council planned a fun Friday for us. It was "Dress Up As Your Favorite Book or Movie Character Day". There were a lot of creative costumes, and we enjoyed getting to know more about each others interests, and learning about some new books to read or movies to see in the future. 

Can you guess which teacher loves to read the Fly Guy books?

Even Echo the Dolphin dressed up as the Gingerbread Man!

Speaking of books, our students are learning to dig deeply into their reading. During Reading Workshop, teachers read and discuss rich literature with students and show how to use strategies that will help students comprehend and think critically about their reading. Miss Wilson is demonstrating how to think about and document the "5 W's" (who, what, where, when, how) as she reads non-fiction. Students then practice using this strategy with a variety of self-selected and teacher-selected books during their independent reading and small-group reading times, while Miss Wilson checks in and conferences with individuals and small groups. 

The second grade hallway is coming to life as the students share their research on the polar regions. 

The students have been excited about putting their work together and sharing it with the whole school. They have identified a clear purpose for their research and an audience to share this with. It's great to see that even our young students can teach others in our school!

It's been a busy, messy few days in the fourth grade classes, as students wrapped up their Native American research...

But, it all came together, and WOW, what an amazing Native American museum they created! Each class studied Native American tribes based on their regions. Students transformed their classrooms into a replica of that region to show what they learned about the environment, homes and lifestyle of Native Americans in a particular region. 

Students made voice recordings about their research and linked them to QR codes. Their peers could then scan the QR codes to learn and take notes about many more Native Americans from all of the different regions. 

This is another FANTASTIC example of how (with the purposeful, guidance from their amazing teachers) our students are teaching and learning from one another. They truly are motivated by their purpose for learning and having an audience to share it with.