It was our first uninterrupted, non-assessment day. It was fantastic!!! Truly! ;)

Our routines for reading groups and BAM Wall have been established and they are going well. The schedule was modified to maximize learning for everyone, and now that is also working very well. Time and patience pays off. :)

The last two Mystery Bags will be shared tomorrow. What fun we've had with that activity. It will surely inspire future ideas as well. Your child should now be able to offer facts and inferences for any item. Today many children applied that learning to a reading task as they read situations with clues, determined the best "who" or "when" inference, then went back to highlight the words that provided the facts that they used to figure it out (the evidence). Everyone did very well.

The best news of all? The children are not paying attention to age or grade any more in classroom activities. They were quite mixed up by choice today which is great evidence of classroom bonding already. Beautiful!

By the way, college came up in a discussion. The question was whether we HAD to go to college. My response was that we all will GET to go to college. Clarification by the child showed that he was asking if everyone really had to. I said, "Yes. We get to." One clever boy said, "That's an inference - not a fact -" then continued to explain about some athletes. I love that confidence, transfer of learning to a novel situation, and participation. ;) The class discussions are becoming rich with language and very inclusive already.






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