We had a wonderful last week of our first Norse Mythology block. Next week, onto our first Math block!
Halloween
Halloween is very much on the minds of these children! I want to remind you that they may dress up on Tuesday for Halloween. We have even moved our Monday Assembly this week to Tuesday, so that everyone can see one another’s costumes!
Morning Lesson
This week wrapped up our first Norse Mythology block. The children did really wonderful work in reviewing the stories, and writing about them in their lesson books. They drew the gods Odin, Thor, Loki, Sif, and Balder, and wrote about them as well. They enjoyed stories about the gods and their interactions with one another, including some trickery, betrayals, rescues, and redemptions. The children delighted so much in the stories this block that they are sad that this block is ending. However, I told them that I will continue to tell stories from Norse Mythology throughout the year.
Some examples of their work from this week include a “tableau” reenactment of a scene from the story “Freya’s Wonderful Necklace,” where Loki steals Freya’s necklace and Heimdall gets it back, creating a drawing with a caption from the story of Iduna’s Apples, and writing a composition about the time Frigg advised the wives of warriors to dress in their husbands’ armor and tie their hair under their chins (to look like they had beards), in order to win a battle for their husbands. Please ask your child to share some of these interesting stories with you. Every day, I am very impressed by their ability to remember key details from previously told stories, and retell them in a coherent way.
Math
I’ve been analyzing the students’ work on their math review sheets, and identified some target areas of need for each child. I then grouped them by their need, and this week we began differentiating the Math Skills class in a more systematic way. We still have to get used to the format of working with our groups, and helping others without simply giving the answer, but I believe we are off to a good start.
Groups worked on tasks including modeling multiplication with beads, solving equations with missing numbers, practicing subtraction strategies, and solving division problems with remainders. With Ms. Kupstas assisting us during both Math Skills classes, I really feel that we are able to make it to each group to help or guide as needed. We will continue this routine next week.
Language Arts
We focused on letter writing this week in Language Arts skills class. First, the children wrote letters to Ms. Peterson. I felt that they really needed and appreciated this outlet to write to their dear former teacher, who I know they miss so much. Their letters followed the Friendly Letter format, and they made sure to use their best penmanship. I see a need to reinforce the use of appropriate ending punctuation, such as periods, question marks, and exclamation points, so we will continue to work on that in the coming weeks.
I also notice that many children ask me “how do you spell…?” when they don’t know the spelling of the word. I help them by putting words with tricky spelling patterns on the board, but I would also like to have them “own” their spelling a little more, and not be so dependent on me to tell them the spelling of something. So I always respond to their question with “How do YOU think it’s spelled?” or “What sounds do you hear in the word?” Then we move on to “Is there a word/ spelling pattern you know that sounds like that?” Hopefully this will help them to think a little more critically about how words are spelled.
Social Emotional Well Being
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how well the students did socially this week. They played very well with one another at recess and during Morning Lesson, they apologized whenever they learned that they had accidentally hurt someone’s feelings, and they just seemed very healthy socially overall this week.