Snow and Ice

There's a real difference between a student in September and a student in January.  Students are now comfortable within the classroom environment, know all of their peers, understand the expectations and are settled into the routine of learning.

Today the students worked on a variety of valuable skills.  The book that they are using is a non-fiction book.  They have been learning about the features of non-fiction writing since the beginning of the year. One of the skills that they were working on was reading a chapter to look for specific information.

Another skill was then processing that information and writing the information in their own words so that they could share their knowledge with others.

 Perhaps the most valuable skill that they practiced was co-operation.  The class only has six copies of the book, so they worked in small groups of three or four students.  They decided who would read, what was important to know, and how they could write the information in their brochures.  They discussed,  they shared and they negotiated.

The room was full of the comfortable hum of learning.  It was music to my ears!