December 13, 2013

Curriculum Connections...

Happy TGIF to everyone as we launch into the final week of the year before we kick off 2014! I would like to begin by wishing everyone a HAPPY NEW YEAR (this is the final Fast Friday Focus of 2013) and may the new year be filled with health, happiness and only wonderful things for each of you and your loved ones - you all deserve the best! Meanwhile, I hope everyone has some wonderful plans for the weekend and for the holiday break. We have a busy weekend ahead as it is actually Paul's birthday on Sunday and we are doing a "family party" and he is beyond excited! I also have to start... and finish my holiday shopping! LOL!

I would like to begin by thanking you all for Wednesday night... words cannot capture what that night meant to me. I am beyond humbled and incredibly honored by that community celebration in honor of the Bammy Award (a collective award for our entire community). I have no words except to say THANK YOU for letting me be the Lead Learner of this most unique school that is very much a utopia for me. You have all changed and enriched my life and I am a better person because of you. I hope you all had a blast because I know it was a most perfect night for me especially considering that I had the chance to celebrate with my family! THANK YOU... THANK YOU... THANK YOU!

I also have to thank you all for welcoming our many guests over this last week. I know it is always disruptive to have people in and out of your classrooms but know that your efforts are greatly appreciated. It is such an incredible honor to show off all the amazing things happening in our school - whether we saw kindergarten students self-assessing their reading skills, second graders making inferences or third graders navigating the shared reading experience the realities were the same - our curriculum is rich, child-centered, vigorous, meaningful and highly engaging. BRAVO to our entire team because it takes a village to educate kids and we do that REALLY WELL! In the end, all of our visitors left here feeling inspired, re-energized and informed (ok - maybe a little disappointed too cause what they saw happening here isn't happening in their spaces but there is always room for growth and that is why they visited). THANK YOU AGAIN! And a special thank you to Lisa D. for helping to coordinate these visits!   

Over the last week, as I walked around the building, I spotted these awesome things...

• Christine and Donna's Morning Message where the class takes apart a message their teachers write and they are challenged to find contextualized grammatical errors, mechanical errors, spelling errors and even embedded mathematics word problems. Best part of the experience was that the children basically ran the whole morning meeting themselves - what an AWESOME way to make a "boring" topic interesting and meaningful to kids!

• Nancy was leading half the class through a lesson on making inferences in literature and I was blown away by the students' collective ability to identify relationships between the actions of the characters and use that information to make inferences! It was really impressive to hear them think aloud about how they could use background knowledge and text evidence to establish appropriate inferences - AWESOME!

• Milissa was working with the fourth graders during the FLES experience and I was so impressed by the children's ability to communicate in Spanish with such confidence and be able to use appropriate greetings and even share their birthdays - WOW!

• In case you missed it, here is the Video Update of the Week featuring Janine's students - please show it to your class...

Tech Tip of the Week...

I highly recommend that you all check out the site PADLET, which is basically a virtual bulletin board. You give it a name and then you can have kids go to that specific webpage (usually an easy address they can copy) and have them use the space to share comments, links, videos, etc. A great way to do a virtual K-W-L or just a place to compile information over a unit of study. AWESOME resource!  


SCHEDULE OF THE WEEK... 

Monday, December 16

"A" Week
Gr. 4 - Immersed Storytelling Experience - All Week Rm. 7
Planbooks Due for all teachers by Wednesday!

Tuesday, December 17

Gr. 2 - Night Star Lab - see email for schedule
Teach Like a Pirate Book Club Meeting - 3pm!

Wednesday, December 18

Staff Holiday Luncheon - Thank you for all you do!
Team M&M Trip to Safety Town

Thursday, December 19

CST at 1:20pm
Rubinberg Trip to Safety Town
Cultural Arts Begins

Friday, December 20

Happy TGIF!
Maione Trip to Safety Town!
Happy Holidays!

Thursday, January 2

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 2014... Here we come!
CST at 1:20pm
Cultural Arts

Friday, January 3

Happy TGIF!

Kids' Korner

I got nothing this week... anyone else have something funny? Please post a comment!      

Pics of the Week...

Check out Cantiague's Week in Tweets - click on the following link to see our Pics of the Week...

WEEK IN TWEETS - DECEMBER 13