Week in Review 11/1/13

Note: This year I am blogging weekly reflections at my school site (weskids.com) in order to provide more transparency in my teaching for parents, students, and the community (local and global). I will be cross-posting most of the entries here at Bit By Bit as well. You can see the original posts at the “Reflections by Mr. S” blog.

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For Grades 1 to 4, students have mostly been working on their “I Can…” statements to prepare for showing off their accomplishments to you during conference nights. It has been amazing to watch how hard students have worked on these self-assessments and reflect on where they are at with skills that have been taught so far.

When you come in on Conference Night, please remember to leave your scholar’s reflections here at school. In last week’s reflection I said I would be sending them home during Report Card time, but after seeing how much students have written, I’ve rethought this. I’d like to keep the reflections here so that students can compare their growth throughout the year(s) with follow-up reflections. I will instead have students complete a separate checklist of mastered skills to bring home during the Report Card periods.

Again, this is your student’s Conference. They will be running it. Think of me as a “fly on the wall,” hopping around the room from family to family, listening in. As mentioned last week, I will try to collect a positive story or an interest of your student so that I can meet individual needs better.

Kindergarten students have not done any reflecting on skills in writing as it isn’t developmentally appropriate. However, please do bring your K student to the lab and ask him/her to show you the lessons we’ve done, ask what their favorite lessons are, or even have them show you our Mo Willems’ book collection! I will try to record a story or interest from Kindergarten parents as well so that I can better meet individual student needs.

When not self-assessing, Grade 1 and Multi 1/2 have been working on the Computer component of our integrated unit, the “Leaf Project.” In computer, they have learned how to use tally marks and create bar graphs and will graph their leaves next week in a drawing program.

Below is a quick “trailer” of their Leaf Walk:

Leaf Walk 2013 from wells elementary on Vimeo.

Things you can do at home with your students:

  • Ask them what they are most excited to share during conference time.
  • Ask them what skills they feel they have mastered since the beginning of the year.
  • Ask them what they know this year that they didn’t know last year.
  • Ask them what goals they have for this next quarter.
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