Stephen's Field Visit

On Thursday, we joined our little friends in Ms. Hager's class to take our first field trip of the year to Stephen's Field.  While enjoying the unseasonably warm day, students had the opportunity to explore the beach and tide pools.  They were given the challenge of finding 5 living and 5 non-living things.  Students found clams, crabs, shells, rocks, and mussels amongst many other things.  The fourth graders were great role-models for their little friends, and we look forward to spending more time with them and visiting Stephen's Field again this year.

Update From the Students in Room 37

Mr. and Mrs. Fish

Mr. and Mrs. Fish came to our school on Tuesday, September 29th.  Those are not their real names; they made up those names. We learned a lot about the ocean to kick off our ocean study this year.  Mr. and Mrs. Fish showed us the ocean food chain, and they also brought costumes to the assembly to show the food chain. The costumes were worn by volunteers, and Mr. Fish tired to move up the food chain (and he survived).  They also told lots of fishy jokes before they sailed away.  We’re excited to dive into more ocean studies this year.

Mark the Beekeeper

Mark the beekeeper came to our classroom to visit fourth grade students on Friday, October 1st. We learned about different types of bees and what they do.  He showed us honey and we got to taste it.  Some of us enjoyed it, but some of us didn't think it tasted very good.  He brought his whole suit and the bees’ home to the school, but there weren't any bees in it. The smoker smelled like lavender. He passed around the racks the bees keep their honey in, and some had no honey in them while other ones did.  It surprised us that the racks with honey were much heavier than the empty racks because they didn’t look like they would be much heavier.  That’s the buzz about our visit with Mark the beekeeper.

Growth Mindset

Dear Families,

As I mentioned at Open House, one of my goals for the year is to help students develop and/or strengthen a growth mindset.  We have done many activities to help us learn about growth mindset and the language of growth mindset, and we’ll continue to do many more throughout the year.  Some of the activities we’ve done include:

• viewing Brain Jump with Ned the Neuron 
• categorizing phrases that show a fixed mindset vs. a growth mindset (I give up vs. I’ll use some of the strategies I’ve learned).
• working in small groups to create phrases we can say in place of phrases such as: “This is too hard,” “I can’t do this,” “I give up,” and “I don’t understand.”  
• reading The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes by Mark Pett.

Students worked in small groups to define growth mindset.  They decided that:

• “A growth mindset is a positive thought that you think about your work.”
• “Growth mindset is being determined.”
• “Growth mindset is feeling confident in yourself and trying your best.”
• “When you challenge your brain, your brain will have positive thoughts, and with all of that you will get smarter.”  

I’ve enjoyed our lessons together explicitly teaching your children about growth mindset, and I’m looking forward to incorporating this work throughout our days together.  Two articles were available to families at Open House that shared more information about growth mindset.  If you’d like a copy of these articles, please let me know and I’d be happy to send them home.

Have a fabulous weekend,

Mrs. Houston