Spirit Night Recap

Thanks to everyone who came out to Papa Murphy's last night to support our school! Here is one of our students waiting for his delicious pepperoni and mushroom pizza:

If you went and remembered to take a picture, send it to us, and we'll post it! :-)

Alimacani Spirit Night @ Papa Murphy's Pizza

(A question for everyone) Who likes pizza? (A question for the parents) Who doesn't want to cook dinner on Thursday night?

Our school is having a fundraiser at Papa Murphy's Pizza on Thursday night from 4:00-7:00! Tell them you're from Alimacani when you pick up your pizza from the location in the Publix Shopping Center on Atlantic/Hodges. Already have dinner plans for Thursday night? Since Papa Murphy's is a "take and bake" kind of pizza place, you can still pick up a pizza, throw it in the freezer, and know you're supporting our school! Have your parents take a picture of you at Papa Murphy's or with your pizza, then e-mail it to us, and we will post it on our blog!

Active Listening

Every Monday, both classes meet together for a Second Step lesson. Second Step lessons teach us how to get along with each other. Right now, we're in our Empathy Training unit, which is teaching us how to understand our feelings and others' feelings. Today we discussed active listening. We learned how to show others we're actively listening by stopping what we're doing, facing them, nodding or saying that we understand what they're saying, and asking questions (without interrupting). Using active listening skills is a respectful way to treat others who are speaking. Sometimes it is difficult to be an active listener, such as when people talk for a long time, when you're late for something, or when there's something else you're interested in. We discussed several strategies for these situations, both at school and home. Active listening is a skill we use every day in both classes to make sure we understand directions given.

Being an active listener not only helps us learn, but is also useful in our friendships. During today's lesson, we also did some role-playing with a partner. We discussed how we could tell our partner was listening to what we were saying and how we felt when we could tell s/he was listening.

Happy Birthday!

A special birthday shout out goes to this marvelous student who celebrates her birthday tomorrow! :-)

Open House

Thank you SO much to all who made it to last night's Open House! We had a full house, so overall, I'd say it was a great success despite feeling like this guy (showing my age here...) For those who couldn't attend, I will e-mail our PowerPoint and we'll send home the Open House Folders we prepared. I will also elaborate a little more on a few things we had to cut short on our blog over the next week. Enjoy your student and family time this weekend! :-)

"Poetry? I thought you teach math?!"

Many students (eventually, adults) dislike or are disinterested in math because they see it as boring and limited-- problems assigned in textbooks/homework, or as just another subject learned in school. One of my goals is for your student to enjoy math, to see it as relevant and useful in everyday life outside of school, perhaps even interesting, as we discover patterns and challenge ourselves to "solve puzzles and mysteries". This year, I have started integrating more literature and reading comprehension strategies into our math workshop. One of my favorites has been our poem of the week. Each week, I select a poem with mathematical connections. At dismissal, we've been reading and interacting with the poems each day to help us practice the skill of visualizing, which is crucial to problem solving. Mondays I read the poem aloud, then the students join in the reading. Tuesdays we focus on unknown vocabulary terms. Wednesdays we look for a math skill connected to the poem. Thursdays we interact with the poem through movements or assigning parts (the students love this!). Fridays we practice visualizing-- brainstorming what we "see" and illustrating the poem.

I look forward to sharing more ways we're making math meaningful and igniting our curiosity and sense to wonder. Today was also Jaguar Spirit Day!

Stay tuned! Soon we'll be using football to continue building our number sense. Have a great weekend! :-)

OPEN HOUSE REMINDER

A blue note was sent home indicating that our OPEN HOUSE date has been changed. We will have open house on SEPTEMBER 13th! Thank you for helping this to be a great start to the year. We look forward to talking with you about our expectations and answering questions. It's going to be a great year.