Building Communities

This past week we have been continuing to work on mastering classroom procedures and routines. Students created classroom jobs and wrote detailed descriptions of the jobs.  When children are included in the decision making process, they tend to take more ownership of their jobs.  We have also been practicing how to give feedback to each other to improve the quality of work.  Our motto is that feedback needs to be kind, helpful, and specific.  This year, we will use feedback to create multiple drafts and beautiful work.
We  have begun to work on our "powerful sentences" and "power writing" to improve writing fluency and content.  We have also started reading and responding to literature.  If you have not done so already, please make sure that your child brings a novel to school that is at their reading level. We are also beginning to look at the American constitution as a basis for creating our classroom constitution.  By analyzing our government, we will come up with a list of rights and responsibilities that we will use as our rules for the classroom.