Privilege and Responsibility

The other day, I saw a kiddo chewing gum in class. My stance has always been that if you need/want gum to help you stay calm and focused, great. As long as it doesn't interfere with our learning, we'll be good to go. So, I quietly told the kiddo that he's fine as long as he spits it out when we are not in class and that a mess isn't made in the room. Fast forward to today, at our meeting, a little less than 1/2 the class is blatantly chewing gum, blowing bubbles, chomping and I found gum wrappers/packages on the floor. This prompted our discussion that when the privilege isn't being used responsibly or students aren't showing responsibility with a privilege, the privilege will be taken away. So, I told them that I am of the mentality that every student gets what they need in order to be successful and that this began with one student chewing gum to allow them to stay calm and focused and now this privilege might be taken away because some-that clearly do not need this-can't show responsibility. It is the same with our flexible seating and reading digitally. Some are clearly abusing their privileges! Anyway, I think they understand the message and will be looking at their needs vs. their wants a little clearer and if not, I will gladly help them to do so! :)

We completed our morning work and after our above discussion, shared one word/phrase that the "blizzard" outside made us feel. Then, we played some Coseeki to get our day going, said the Pledge and wrote down our SMART goal. In Science, we took the temperatures of different rooms around the school and found that most of the thermostats are pretty true to actual temperature but also, our building is overall wasting energy. Then, in Math Workshop, we had some controlled chaos with 4 different groups of kiddos learning at one time. Some just have a greater understanding of decimals. We had Music, lunch and indoor recess and then, in brown girl dreaming, we learned a little more about what is was like for Jacqueline's family in the south-which is harder than for her father's family in Ohio, during this time... We read independently and created our February Book-it goals and visited the library. Then, we tried something new by Jigsawing an activity. Everyone watched a video by the author of our non-fiction text we're working with yesterday, and answered one question. Today, we got into groups so that each group had someone that answered each question, and discussed. Next, we worked with problems/solution-a text feature we have previously identified. Once we finished with that, we moved into creating our graphic narrative using the LEGO StoryVisualizer software.