Thoughtful productivitiy

In reflecting on our day, I feel we had a pretty productive day. I feel like we are in the groove of school and are trying to better ourselves for the best "me" every day. We continued our focus on purpose and the WHY to our WHAT today with first picking a seat that is the best for us in terms of learning. I have to say that seats were chosen very thoughtfully today and I agreed with where kiddos chose to sit. This, to me, is more powerful than me assigning seats. They are understanding what they need in order to be successful! Wow. After completing our M4T, in meeting, we shared what we enjoy doing on a rainy day and then played "What are you doing?" where I learned a new dance move but can't remember what it's called... Then, we continued our work with synonyms and antonyms and then wrote our shadow stories. They are putting more effort into these than expected so we'll be continuing with these tomorrow. Then, in Because of Mr. Terupt, Jeffrey opened up more and we found out that he had a brother with Down Syndrome that he unfortunately lost to Leukemia. And, Lexie isn't given much attention at home as her parents are going through a pretty awful divorce and her mother's advice isn't so great. This gave us a LOT to think about when it comes to point of view and why Jeffrey and Lexie act certain ways and do what they do. We had a good amount of time for Reader's Workshop to read, visit the library, finish our work with the plot of "The Great Hodgi" in StoryWorks and blog. Today was a gym day but we had a 4th grade rehearsal for the Spring Concert instead. Then, we had lunch and outdoor recess. We wrote our assignments down (has your kiddo checked out this week's homework on Canvas?) and then Mrs. Firestone and Mrs. Andrews came in to get us set up to take the Bridge Course assessment. In 5th grade, there is an option for an accelerated math class that merges the 5th and 6th grade curriculums together. So, all 4th grade kiddos take this online assessment as a screener for if this course would be good for them. After the brief assessment, we reviewed adding and subtracting mixed numbers. With all the amazing work over the last few days, I thought a lot were ready for the test, however, when I put the option on the board, more than a few said they need more time to practice and even more help understanding. So, we'll be testing Friday, Monday and Tuesday. After Math Workshop, we followed up our fossil work with Dr. Donna by reading an article from StoryWorks from 2014 about "The Girl Who Discovered Dinosaurs." Our day concluded with Wonder Time.