Our class entered January with renewed energy and vigor as we refreshed our norms and settled into our new units. Here is a glimpse into our work this month and what our small, but mighty crew is working on!
Morning Meetings
This month we explored self-discipline and began by discussing what self-control and self-discipline looks like. We practiced controlling our bodies and our words through games like sneaky statues and keepy uppy. We also worked on developing our mindfulness skills through activities like meditation and breathwork.
Literacy
We started the month with a mini-unit in response to student requests to learn a little bit about space after enjoying our read aloud on Mars. Future Engineers is hosting the Power to Explore Challenge in conjunction with NASA, in which students are tasked with learning about NASA’s Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS), then design a mission that would use this type of power to explore a place in space. We used this unit to focus on reading to answer questions and writing for a specific task with very specific requirements. Students had opportunity to submit an entry to the contest if they chose.
Our second unit, which will be the bulk of our work this trimester, is called: Villains in the Wild. This unit began this month with fairy tales and understanding story elements – What makes a fairy tale a fairy tale, and why do these stories endure over time? We started by revisiting our favorite fairy tales and reading multiple different cultural interpretations of fairy tales from across the world. Students also compared and contrasted different versions in order to find commonalities and differences across cultures and stories.
Theme
We transitioned from dinosaurs and earth science into our new unit about ecosystems, inheritance of traits and how species interact in an ecosystem in order to create balance. We will started by asking why does an organism look the way it does, and why does it matter? We explored different phenomena to get us introduced to the concept of traits, variability and inheritance.
