May 8, 2015
Dates to Remember…
Thursday, May 14: Family Meeting Friday, May 15: Field Trip to the Community Garden Friday, May 29: School Field Trip to Carnegie Museum of Natural History! Watch for a permission slip on M onday! Friday, June 5: Family Picnic The Learning Center Teachers are
Appreciated!
Wow- what a delicious week we have had.
Many families pulled together this week
to provide delectable lunches every day
for the staff. Once again, allow us to say,
how much we appreciate all that The
Learning Center families do!
Wrapping up an exciting week…
Front Page News!
The Newspaper Club, part of our
After School Program, led by
Mary Spicer, took the initiative
to write to Nick Bruel, author of
the Bad Kitty books and ask for
an interview since he was in
Meadville on Wednesday
evening. They were granted the
interview and got to meet Nick
in person. Although our
interview was brief he had some
inspiring words for the young
writers and many of the
students attended his lecture
later that evening. Can’t wait to
read all about it in the first
edition of The Learning Center
Chronicle!
WE DID IT! The Spring Bling was a huge success! With the help of many we raised over $10,000 and had over 100 people attend the event! Thanks to everyone who volunteered their time and offered donations. Big thanks to Ashley, Annie, and David for leading this event. It was a lovely affair and the students beamed with pride when we told them how much everyone loved their artwork! WE LOVED OUR SPECIAL PEOPLE! Last Friday we had 80 of our most special friends join us at The Learning Center for Special Person’s Day. They got to see our amazing African Song, Dance, and Drumming pieces that we created during our residency with One World Tribe. Then our guests joined us in the classroom for reading, writing, math, and art projects. It was wonderful! Thanks so much to Kennedy, Ceco, and Raymond from One World Tribe for all of their work with us. And thanks to all of our Special People for supporting us and our school! AND OUR SPECIAL SNAKES… After Special Person’s Day, we headed to Shadybrook for a relaxing afternoon of playing in the sunshine. W e were also lucky enough to get a surprise visit from Dan’s pet snake Gordy! Everyone enjoyed watching Gordy slither through the grass, and most of us got a chance to touch or hold him.
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Happy Mother’s Day!
All of the classes have worked hard
creating gifts for our mothers this
week!
In our classrooms…
There has been lots of work with words in Kindergarten lately as we just added our 43rd word to our Word Wall. All the while we have been practicing recognizing and writing those high frequency words, we have been busy playing games to help us develop strategies to work with other words. And Kindergarteners just can’t get enough of books! W e are now reading two books a week in our guided reading groups. And some of us have been working on a new technique to decode unknown words by covering up parts of words. We tackle those bigger words in chunks and then put the chunks together. This combined with blending sounds and using picture clues are making us stronger readers every day. Meanwhile in Math we started the beginning of the week reviewing addition and subtraction. But by the middle of the week we had moved onto a new challenge-­‐ money! The kids loved sorting the coins and then using magnifying glasses to examine the similarities and differences between the different coins. Our goal this week was to recognize the names and values of the coins. But you know the K Club-­‐ they love a challenge. So by the end of the week we were learning to tell the coins apart using only our sense of touch… digging in socks and trying to pull out the appropriate coins just by feeling them. Try it at home-­‐ it sure is fun! And we even spent some time exploring some foreign currency and using the globe to locate the different countries. The most exciting was to have a look at the money from Africa! Our first week of our last full month together found the Novices just as enthusiastic about learning as they were the beginning of the year. It’s the sun…our room radiates its energy! Our reading groups tackled non-­‐fiction reading with all of its special and sometimes difficult features – table of contents, glossary, informational boxes within the text, labels and captions – ALL the things that make non fiction reading so informative. Each group learned about a different animal and by the end of the week, they worked to create a poster so they could share their new learning with the rest of the class. W e are now experts on pandas, meerkats, guinea pigs, and snakes! Somehow dice was part of math every day this week, and we did some fun things you can do at home (summer is on the way you know!)… Roll two numbers and form an equation using those numbers. For example: 5 and 6 rolled could be 5 + 6 = 11; OR 6 – 5 =1; OR 6 x 5 = 30; OR 6 divided by 5 = 1 remainder 1. By the end of this week, most if not all of the kiddos were using at least three of the operations. Many were quickly and efficiently using all four basic operations. Another fun one…roll two numbers and make the largest number you can; the smallest number you can. By the end of the week, we were rolling four numbers and the kids were using their knowledge of place value to make numbers in the thousands. Finally, you know those Novices LOVE to cook … and our favorite math this week was when we made fudge for our moms for Mother’s Day. For the first time, the Novices learned to double a recipe – we were so happy to see that the children did that with ease-­‐even doubling things like ¼ cup. They were even able to triple a recipe! They are applying what they know! Happy day for the Novices, and Happy Mother’s Day to all of you! The Players continue to work very hard across the board! We're making great progress in all of our novels and having some really remarkable discussions about them...now that we're really getting into the good, meaty parts of all of them! The "Webs" are bringing into question the reality of our book, from the perspectives of several of its main characters. The "Wrinkles" are dissecting how and why the author uses such unusual words and descriptions when telling about her characters. And the "Stars" are finding tons of imagery, symbolism, and levels of meaning within the text... And Dan only planned for some of that to happen! The skills we've been developing all year are really being applied, full steam, now. This has been equally true in Math! One group has been working on converting fractions to decimals, as well as adding decimals. The other group has been applying our understanding of fractions, decimals, and their equivalencies to an entirely new way of working with these values: percents! In addition to the big stuff, we have more smaller-­‐scale projects going on (many of them inspired and driven by the students!) than we have room to write about... Several students are working on independent research around different topics related to our work that interest them, some students are working on letters, cards, and short stories... So much wonderful stuff, such a stellar group of kids.