Our kindergarten students are buddies with 4th graders and are doing a very special project this year. Along with playing, exploring and learning with our buddies, we are also joining the “Compassion Games” with them!
The compassion games are a way to spread love and kindness through small, simple acts of compassion, or join a global team and “compete” in compassionate events. The first thing we did was to show our love for the earth by going outside with our buddies and picking up trash around the school. The next week, we worked with our buddies to create “paper plate awards” to anyone in the school that who we felt deserved an award for being kind.
One group gave an award to a fifth grader for empathy, another gave an award to their sibling for playing with them and two groups gave awards to Peter for being a good builder and great card player! We presented the awards at morning assembly on Wednesday and it went very well. We are going to continue the Compassion Games by taking turns challenging our buddies to weekly acts of compassion.
The beginning of 4th grade was dedicated to goal setting, exploring a growth mindset, and learning how to work together as community within our classroom. Our very first order of action was to establish our “4th Grade Agreements,” a list of classroom expectations created entirely by our students. We discussed what is important within our learning community and for our relationships, and we practiced listening and leading through the Marshmallow Challenge.
Students investigated the difference between having a fixed mindset (I can’t do this. I’ll never be good at basketball!) and a growth mindset (If I practice hard enough, I can get better at this task). We brainstormed ways to improve our mindsets and work to change them over to a growth area, even when what we are doing is difficult or boring. Hopefully, this will help set us all up for a successful year of learning and emotional growth!
January has been busy! We are so excited because we just finished our read aloud: Matilda! Yeeeee! It was an awesome book. It was crazy when we found out that (spoiler alert) Ms. Honey’s aunt was the revolting gumboil Headmistress Trunchbull. We are excited because next week we get to write our own amazing fantasy books.
In math, time travelling Tesla came to Mr. Mirsky in a dream and asked us to design petting zoos for him. Some kids don’t think that really happened, but it helped us learn about multiplication. We also learned our 6-9 times tables and a lot of different strategies.
In Tefillah, we broke up into groups to learn about prayers. We are continuing to study them and it is really fun. In Hebrew we started doing holiday work on Tu B’shvat (the birthday of the trees!).
Today in community time we talked about project time and how to organize our bulletin boards so that they have more kid writing. We also will be hanging up our non-traditional homework presentations. We just had three amazing presentations about Leonardo Da Vinci, Roald Dahl, and Greek Gods.
The most exciting part of the week is…..(drumroll please) the Chumash Ceremony parts. We got our characters and we are so excited to perform for our families and friends!
OK, time for shabbat. Au Revoir from THIRDGRADIAN BLOGGERS.
Children have completed their 3-d design unit and have created a variety of structures and figures. To earn the privilege of using glue and tape, kids first had to show they could build things using different attachment strategies. Even after glue and tape were given to them, students continued to build small creatures and plants using their newly learned attachment strategies. I decided to put all of their creations together in a display that we call “The Glueless Forest.” The results are impressive and speak for themselves.
Since returning from Winter break, students in grades 3-5 have begun learning all about Ukulele. We began with the basics of care and tuning, and now we’ve even got a couple chords under our belts! Look out for more to come from these fantastic young musicians!
This year, the Design Lab has a small corner carved out with bean bags and pillows. It has become affectionately know as the “Recharging Station” and is meant to be used for students to relax for a few short minutes during their busy days to unwind and recharge.
The citizens of Thirdgradia noticed that the Recharging Station was being used during class in a distracting and unhelpful way. Students were getting too comfortable and spending too long there. The third grade class decided to focus on this ‘problem’ and to find a solution for it through the design thinking process. Luckily, two Brown Engineering students, Katie and Sara, were also working on a similar design problem. They were looking to create furniture for children that was designed with children’s input. We invited them to the third grade Design Lab class every Friday to be a part of this process.
The first step the third graders took was to be empathetic in order to understand the users (tired students). They compiled a list of questions and interviewed students from all grades during their recess and free time for two weeks.
The second step of Design Thinking required that third graders study and understand the data and information they collected and then defined their problem in a ‘How might we…’ statement.
Here is their statement: How might Thirdgradia fix/ change/ redesign the Recharging Station so it will be a small, private, less comfortable, calming and less attractive spot?
The third step of their Design Thinking process was to brainstorm and think of as many wild solutions as they possibly could. This process was facilitated by our friends Sara and Katie, from Brown. Students noticed that the Recharging Station was too open and its boundaries undefined. Students’ ideas included adding a privacy screen, developing a system that shows who is in the station, adding windows, and adding an escape route in the event of a fire. Students also wanted to reduce comfort (remember, one of their problems was that kids were spending too much time in the station!) by rearranging the pillows, building a plain cardboard structure, using a plain color and reminding users about appropriate use of the station.
The fourth step in the process was prototyping, at which time students were able to create and build. They worked with the Brown students to build small models of what they hoped to create. The students had a short initial prototyping experience, where the groups of students were asked to draw or build some aspect of the ideas generated earlier.
This prototype represents a new way to arrange the cushions in the stationThis prototype is part of a ticket systema special phone system that teachers can use to communicate with students in the station
Last week, Sara and Katie brought to class their final prototype that incorporated many of the students’ solutions and perspectives. They call it the Quiet Pod. The class put the pieces together to create the final product in half an hour. The students had lots of fun, and were given ample opportunities for collaborative work and cooperative learning. They also gave the designers thoughtful and useful critique.
We are grateful for our school’s partnership with these talented students and the engineering department at Brown.
Our work is not done yet, but it is incredibly exciting to see our design process coming to life!
This is what we’ve been doing for the past few weeks:
Let’s start with science. We took wires and a battery and a light bulb and tried to make the light light up. We also tried to make a long string of lights and make all of them light up. We unplugged one of the lights but the other ones had to stay on.
In spelling we are having a lot of tests. We have pre-tests to help us prepare, and then a post test. The theme last week was consonant blends. Also in ELA, we finished our final persuasive essays and now we are starting on a new unit on Fantasy. We are reading Matilda out loud. We have jobs like “empath” who answers the question, “what would you do if you were _____.” We also have an artist, our personal favorite, who has to draw a picture based on the chapter we are reading.
In community time we have been talking about problems and design solutions. Just today Mr. Mirsky told us about a new money system (Cubucks). We can earn them by doing more homework, not calling out, and being more respectful to our peers.
In Judaics we made Parsha cakes based on scenes from the Torah portion with Jacob in it. And we have been learning about Chanukah. We just finished our Lights of my Life project (see photos above). They are hanging up in the Lobby and they look awesome.
When I was in elementary school, homework was mostly photocopied dittos. These “skill and drill” worksheets were tedious, boring, and were easily completed on the bus ride to school. In my opinion, the classroom is the place where practicing skills is most beneficial, where the teacher can provide targeted instruction, and the community can provide expert feedback. The home provides a more comfortable, less formal learning environment that allows children to take manageable risks as they follow their interests. Nontraditional homework harnesses the benefits of learning from home, and flips the traditional model of homework that I grew up with.
In Thirdgradia this week we just had our second round of presentations, and each of them was rigorously researched, intentionally crafted, and passionately delivered. For the first round, children were limited to people (fictional or real) and their chosen topics encompassed a broad range of personalities. Although all presentations incorporated a poster board, each student’s personal style was on full display.
I was genuinely moved by the hard work evidenced by these presentations. I look forward to seeing the rest of the community present, and you can look forward to another blog post soon to document their efforts.
Our first subject is math. This week we have been working hard. We started a new unit on addition with regrouping. We got to use this thing called the PVC, place value chart. It’s really good because we get to do our own method, aka regrouping. The PVC was handmade by Thirdgradia, we use unit cubes and do the problems in our hard cover math books.
We have been doing a lot of writing. We have been writing persuasive essays. These bloggers essays are about the Spice Girls and Michael Jackson. We made up a new name for writing: the writing factory. Push a button to start it up, but don’t hit self destruct or Mr. Mirsky will put it back to old school writing.
In Hebrew we have been doing a really fun test where we copy the sentences in Hebrew and draw pictures — oh that reminds us! Thirdgradian parents, we are WARNING you: you are going to have pictures overflowing your house because your kids will do Lights of Your Life posters for Hanukkah.
Thirdgradia is looking forward to a lot of things in the coming weeks. We will have some buddy time on Monday with a Thanksgiving snack feast. We can’t wait for you to see these pictures, all the ones on the blog were taken by us. Another thing we are really excited for is we are getting Pen Pals from Los Angeles.
In community time, we talked about the transition song. We talked about how to use it properly, and if we should get a longer one. Our citizens thought it would be a good idea to make up our OWN transition song.
Since we are learning about persuasive essays, let’s write a conclusion now. Thirdgradia is the best third grade in the history of third grade. Au revoir, adios, shalom, good bye. Until next time. 🙂
exploring and learning with our buddies, we are also joining the “Compassion Games” with them!
