September 7, 2015

I hope you've been enjoying the three-day weekend! We had an amazing first week in Turquesa, and I'm hoping that your child shared a lot of it with you already.

I'll be sending out weekly emails this year in order to fill you in on what's been happening in the classroom and what's coming up. I'll be sharing a lot of information with you tomorrow night at Upper Elementary Parent Night (6 pm in Turquesa), but I couldn't wait to share a few highlights from our week.

Last week, we really focused on community building. We played a whole bunch of getting-to-know-you games throughout the week - everything from Classmate Scavenger Hunt to Poison Dart Frog. Mr. Robin and I are already impressed with how caring and attentive our people are to the needs and feelings of others. At this age, children have really strong social needs and it's important to incorporate that drive into communications and academic work. 

In order to give them intellectual and organizational community events, I purposefully introduced several free-form collaborative team-style exercises. For example, they split into teams of 5 in order to make a scale-model mobiles of the solar system. This was a review lesson that anchors our earth science work, but it was also a great chance for me to see how they work together, how they express their ideas and how they respond to each other. I have to be completely honest and say that I've rarely met a group of children who are as naturally and easily compatible as this year's Turquesa, while also being amazingly diverse in terms of learning needs and communication styles. Wow! I'm really excited for this year!

Beyond community building, we had a full array of history, writing, science and literature lessons. Math and reading assessments, as well, were happening throughout the week.  

I hope to see you tomorrow evening for Parent Night and Friday afternoon from 5-7 for the Recess Monkey Back-to-School BBQ!

As always, please let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you!
Nicole