A Wonderful Week of Learning!

Peer Editing

This week we chose one of our chapter books, question/answer books or our procedural (how-to) book to peer edit.  Each writer read their classmates writing and offered written feedback of two stars and a wish...two skills they used well and one improvement they could make to their writing.  I'm humbled and impressed by the kind, caring, thoughtful and intelligent way these partnerships worked together.  

We learned about Martin Luther King Jr., Alfred Nobel, and Nobel Peace Prizes, Rosa Parks, Henry Dunant with the Student Justice Union from SBHS and some of our fifth-grade peers.

On Friday, we met Sam Drazin the creator of a Changing Perspectives curriculum that inspired us to appreciate ourselves and each other for all of the visible and invisible differences.  Sam was born with facial differences and in these photos, he is sharing a hearing aid device to help us understand how he hears.  

This week we finished our Flat Stanley letters.  Thank you for sharing a contact with us.  We will finalize and mail the letters out tomorrow, Tuesday, January 22nd. I hope you all enjoyed receiving mail at your house.  We invite you to decorate the Stanley that arrived at your house and bring in to school to share this week.

We are beginning our studies of the United States of America.  This week we have experienced state maps and we are familiarizing ourselves with the state names and abbreviations.

On Friday, I read a book titled, Martin's Big Words during our morning meeting.  When we took the time to discuss our thoughts about the book, our brilliant students made connections between Martin's vision of acceptance with Sam Drazin's changing perspectives:  If we change our perspective and love people for who they are, with differences that are visible and invisible we can live in peace.  

Thank you for all you do,

Jen Belisle