Thankful.

As we near our various celebrations for Thanksgiving, I want everyone to know how grateful I am for your children. I enjoy my job tremendously, and this is due to the eagerness and brightness and humor of your children, who you share with me every day. Thank you for your ongoing support and generosity as well; the amount of books purchased for our classroom library from the book fair was numerous. Thank you!

". . . and two, if by sea. . ."

Thanks also to everyone for attending Friday's Poetry in the Park. The weather seemed chilly at first, but it ended up being just perfect. The fourth graders did such a nice job reciting "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere," joining the long line of Shorecrest students who have met and conquered the challenge.

Hopefully you were able to take some time to read the poetry written and illustrated by the class. You will have noticed that are poems were either about seemingly insignificant objects that the students made important through their prose, or about people that mattered to them. To be true to our mentor text, Valerie Worth's All the Little Poems and Fourteen More, students illustrated their poems with simple drawings of their subjects. The result is a lovely collection of tremendous poems, providing for the audience tiny windows into the student's hearts and, sometimes, glimpses of their funny bones.

When we return from Thanksgiving break, students will begin their third round in technology and will begin creating their digital portfolios. Portfolios can serve many purposes; ours are intended to be a collection of work that demonstrates each student's academic, artistic and personal growth throughout her/his time at Shorecrest. Since your children have attended Shorecrest, their teachers have been saving and scanning their work so that in fourth grade, students have artifacts that reflect all of their years of learning. Students create web sites in iWeb, designing pages for each grade of attendance. Students who have attended Shorecest for only a year or two include more artifacts from the grades of attendance and organize their content by subject rather than grade.

Because the overarching purpose of the portfolio is to allow the students to reflect on their growth as learners over time, written reflections are a crucial component of the portfolios. In writing this week, students are delving into the genre of written reflections. We began our study by considering what a reflection is--and we talked about what we do when we look in the mirror. More often that not, we look in the mirror with a critical eye: What do we see that we like? What do we want to improve? Rarely are we simply noticing details without any thought. A written portfolio reflection is not only intended to describe each project or event that is used as an artifact, but reveal how that project or event has impacted each learner in a significant way. Writing these reflections is challenging: even for adults, being truly reflective is tough. After considering the meaning of a reflection, we examined two examples of reflective pieces, thinking about what makes a high-quality reflection. After some thought and discussion, we developed the following guidelines:

Chloe shares with the class her reflection plan.

Today we planned and began composing our first written reflections, writing together about the experience of writing our personal narratives. Students did a fantastic job today doing some heavy thinking work. So many students were able to think critically about how they have grown as writers through the writing process. To the right, you can catch a shadow of Chloe as she shares her reflection plan. She tops her "How have I changed as a learner list" with:

• take chances, be free
• it's okay to make mistakes

Yay Chloe! So proud.

As we move through this extensive process, students will have a great deal of choice about what they choose to include and write about in their portfolios. At the very end of the year we will have a portfolio share: students will invite you to school and share with your their portfolios. If you have not experienced this event with an older sibling, begin preparing now to smile and laugh and cry--a lot.

We have just started unit 5 in math, during which we will begin learning about multi-digit multiplication. We began the unit learning about original and extended facts. Original facts are multiplication facts that students have been working to learn for years (i.e 3 x 7), while extended facts are those same facts with at least one factor that is 10 (or 100, 1000, etc.) times larger (i.e. 30 x 70). Then on Friday students were introduced to the partial products algorithm by playing a game called multiplication wrestling. The partial products algorithm works like partial sums and differences: students learn to break problems into smaller problems in order to solve them. So, 82 x 34 becomes (80 + 2) x (30 + 4). After the numbers are broken down by place value, then students learn to multiply all of the parts: 80 x 30, 80 x 4, 2 x 30 and 2 x 4. The products from each of these pieces are put back together to end with the final product. In order for this algorithm to be most useful, students need to have an accurate and quick recall of multiplication facts as well as solid understanding of place value.

Will H. and Matthew generate a list of behaviors they value.

In social studies this week, after having learned about the Mayflower Compact, our class will compose our own class compact. Today, after closely studying and identifying the values revealed in the original Compact--complete with nearly indecipherable language!--we considered our own values within our classroom. Students worked in partnerships to generate a list of behaviors we value, then we combined our lists, categorizing as we went. After a lengthy discussion and period of work, we identified the following values:

• cooperate with one another
• be inclusive--include everyone
• be pro-active about being inclusive--don't wait for someone else to do it
• take charge of your own learning
• value the rules
• respect on another
• be risk takers
• learn from our mistakes

Tomorrow students will begin composing individual versions of a compact, as students use the list above as well as examples of past class compacts to guide their writing. Students will more than likely be completing their writing as homework tomorrow night. Then, with twenty drafts in hand, we will begin narrowing down our choices, looking for examples that best reflect our values. After narrowing the choices to three or four, the students will vote for their top choice. Students may also, if they choose, submit a design for the compact as well. Those, too, will be presented to the class and voted upon. I am aiming to have a completed compact by the end of the week.

Important upcoming events:
November 20 - 24: Thanksgiving break
November 28 - December 9: Holiday Gift Drive
December 6: Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates theater performance
December 7: LD Chorus Performance
December 16: LD Holiday Sing Along, 11:00 a.m.
December 19 - January 2: Winter Break