Controlled Chaos

If you were to walk in the room during most of our learning, you would witness what I like to call "controlled chaos." My husband thinks it's so weird how different learning is these days and why I am so good at multi-tasking...well, in our Math Workshop for example, I had a group of kiddos working on growing and changing patterns, a group of students practicing place and value and a group of students working with me for some re-teaching of skills. School is so differentiated now that it could be seen as chaotic when in reality, I know exactly where every student is in their learning and am trying to allow them to learn at their own pace.

We are on day 2 of formally beginning i-Time in the building, although we've been doing it for a couple of weeks now. I'm working with a small group with math practice so it is important for students to be independent. MOST of the class is doing what they need to be doing in order for this time to be successful. In our morning meeting, we shared our favorite animals (a lot of different types of cats...) and played a quick game of Coseeki. We checked on our individual goals and then practiced the idea of x10 for our number talk before beginning our Math Workshop. Students used ipads in Music today but not sure exactly how-you'll have to ask. After recess, we finished our book, Fish In a Tree, and we LOVE how Ally grew in her confidence and reading ability. Great minds DON'T think alike! Or at least they don't have to! We also made inferences about some character traits of Ally from her feelings, actions, things she said and thought and proved our inferences with text. After reading independently, conferencing with me and/or visiting the library. we continued our work with inferences by playing a game, Shoots and Ladders, making inferences from pictures and working with the story, The Day It Rained Cats to make inferences. I read, The Giving Tree to show how to write using sequencing and then students practiced writing their own narrative from a small moment using what we have compiled as traits for writing Good Narratives. Finally, in Social Studies, we continued our work with map skills of Ohio (states that border, cities within, rivers, etc.) and then started researching Franklin County for our Great Ohio Mail Race.