We Are Off And Running

We are entering our 2nd full week of school and I have seen each class two times. So far we have reviewed our Missouri Reading Award Programs, checked out for the first time, learned how to access digital materials at home, set up Google Classrooms, and become familiar with Overdrive ebooks.  Mrs. Haynes met with each class before their second checkout (first with their classroom teacher) and chatted with the kiddos about checkout expectations and a couple of other new things she is working on.  She is so good about being proactive instead of reactive to what we know happens each year in our library.

Tomorrow each grade level will begin their first maker unit.  These units will include inquiry, mini lessons as necessary to teach/review note-taking, selecting best sources, questioning, citing sources, locating materials in our library and on our website, and instruction/exploration on databases and apps we will be using.

This is our plan...

Fifth graders are designers and will begin working through our new Lego WeDo 2.0 sets and projects.  We will then use what we have learned to incorporate Lego WeDo into our Rube Goldberg Machines.

Fourth graders are creative thinkers and will be learning about and building catapults.

Third grade will begin a year of inventing by learning about inventors and then become inventors themselves.

Second grade starts a year of robotics, programming, and coding.  We will start with simple paper & pencil coding and move into more advanced coding requiring critical thinking skills.

First grade begins a year of storytelling using Legos as inspiration.  I have not purchased the Lego StoryStarter kits so we will be using our MakerSpace Legos and plates.  Creative thinking and presentation is our focus to start the year.

Kindergarteners are builders and will be reading Missouri Building Block nominees and will then share what they loved about the book by building with Legos, Keva Planks, TinkerToys, Zoobs and Attribute Blocks.  We also are working hard to learn our library numbers, how to use shelf markers, and the process to check out books.