Post #23

A belated happy Valentine's Day! Sorry about not posting last week- things got a little crazy in the McCallum household. All is going well now and I appreciate your support and kindness. The girls had so much fun celebrating with each other and modeling their Wordly Wise creativity.

I talk often about how special St. Catherine's is and how blessed I am to teach at such an incredible school and spend my day with this special group of Fourthies. So for the next couple of weeks I'm going to post a short video demonstrating what makes this school such a great place to teach and learn. I'll call these clips- IGTBU! (short for "It's good to be us!") Imagine 18 highly excited 9 and 10 year olds in crazy outfits, enjoying a little morning sugar, running from class to class with cards and treats. You get the picture. One minute later they are engrossed in math problem solving. Take a look:

On to the week's highlights.... We are celebrating mistakes and staying the course with difficult math. The girls are learning long division. They have turned up their focus and determination dials. I loved when one student remarked, "This is a lot easier than it was yesterday." It's all about having a growth mind-set- valuing learning and thriving in the face of challenge. The girls problem solved with Lady GaGa and our national anthem using long division and large digit multiplication. Fact 

Has your daughter mentioned her friendship machine and her company/product that fosters friendship? The girls imagined a machine or product whose sole purpose was to encourage friendship. They wrote about their machine, explained how it works and how it benefits society. They even created business cards:

The girls created abstract art with their voices. They wrote a descriptive paragraph describing their "art" and what it represents to them. Later they isolated specific parts of speech in their writing. Editing practice included Charlie Brown's valentine angst.  Wordly Wise creative writing involved unique pancakes.  Be sure to ask your daughter to show you her creative writing book. The girls are so very clever and imaginative when they work with their vocabulary.

This week's 3Word Thursday required the girls to use the words:branch, rocking chair, and head-band and include something about this image. 

They read about emojis and a young entrepreneur in their Newsela accounts. I visited the Newsela headquarters when I was in New York last week. It was great to see the organization that is opening up the world for our girls-one current event at a time.

Girls- Your blog mystery question is....... What does IGTBU stand for?