SIMS class update: Lots of Beginnings

SIMS class update: Lots of Beginnings

I already miss gardening season...

Logistics Alert:
Picture Day Monday
All permission forms are in. Thanks!!!!

[Now the wordy stuff]

Getting your kid to reflect on the school day* is a bit of an opportunity for growth ("What did you learn today?"  "Stuff! What do we have to eat??") so I'll try to do a weekly post to fill in the gaps.

Here are some milestones from the week:

• Our spelling system has begun, with all students showing growth.
• Mr Berendt has collected a writing sample from each kid so we can customize our teaching.
• Freewriting has really helped many kids with their fluency (even the very cautious writers).
• Phases of Matter review is complete in Science.
• In Maths we have worked on creating common vocabulary and problem-solving strategies.
• We made our hierarchies of Human Needs (Maslow, but more fun).
• Students are learning really cool stuff in their exploratories (too much to list).
• All students can now access the computer lab.
• All students can use our apocalypse-grade class laptops.
• All kids are using Classroom. Ask them to show you; it works at home, too!

Here are some things to look forward to:

• Systems of Government and Society. This is pretty timely, and builds on themes of personal and social responsibility. We'll use this to draw together lots of reading, writing, computing, reflecting, and thinking.
• Benchmark tests in Numeracy and Literacy. I'm not a fan of too much testing, but we use small focused tests to customize learning, and so kids can see (and help direct) their growth. If a test can help a kid be proud of who they are, what they've learned, and where they're going, I like it. Otherwise, we assess in different ways.
• Lots of confidence-building maths using dice, markers on the windows, measuring tapes, and spreadsheets. We will learn to love spreadsheets.
• Prodigy. We will use Prodigy as way to practice computational skills and concepts. It even helps with basic reading. It's a very 'gamey'-looking online tool, but results have been excellent in the past and the kids enjoy it. We'll use it as a reward or a break from heavier thinking.

A note on maths language: 
Some great recent research has shown that teachers really hamstring kids in maths when we keep changing our wording. As a staff SIMS has decided to do our best to fix that. We find the difference, sum, or quotient. We multiply factors to find a product. 123.34 is 'One hundred twenty-three and thirty-four hundredths'.
This has been proven to work, I find it quite challenging to do, and any help you can give by using good math language at home is truly appreciated. More info and tips to come.

*This reflection is stupendously important for intellectual growth, and it doesn't happen enough in my family. We're working on it.