Superflex and Social Thinking

Do you have a Worry Wall at home? Perhaps your child struggles with being a Topic Twister? Fear not, these "unthinkables" can get in our brains and take over, but we have the power to defeat them!

This is the premises of the social thinking curriculum we are using with Mr. Morris. The idea is that bad thoughts (unthinkables) can creep in our brains and cause us to act or feel certain ways. We are encouraging the class to defeat these unthinkables by being Superflex, the super hero who defeats the unthinkable (aka undesirable) villains. 

Some language we have been using is "unexpected" instead of "bad" or "wrong." For example, it is unexpected for a student to bang on his desk in the middle of class. When something unexpected happens it can cause people to have "uncomfortable" thoughts. When things go as expected people are content and "comfortable." 

We encourage you to use this same language at home. Below are a few of the unthinkables and their traits. 

1st Grade Play!

Congratulations to all of the first grade classes that participated in our play last week. I must say the flies in ties are my favorite, but I'm probably a little bias!

2014 Biannual NCAIS Presentation

This year I have teamed with Mrs. Romero again to present at the biannual NCAIS Educatiors conference. I thought I would share.

Looking for the good.

Recently during our morning meetings I have asked the students to find a partner and give them and compliment them on something non-physical (i.e. I like the way you solved the problem on the board during math yesterday). I have been so impressed and pleased with the responses they have been coming up with, and they know that every few days this will happen. The hope is that they will start looking for more of the good in one another.

Dividing words into syllables

This week we have been learning all about closed syllables, and the short vowel sounds that are associated with closed syllables. However, students must first be able to divide words into syllables before deciding what kind of syllable they are working with.

Of course there are always exceptions to these rules, but for our purposes, we use the following rules when dividing words into syllables

VC-V

VC-CV

VC-CCV

VC-CV

Here, Tate is dividing words into syllables and tapping each syllable before tackling the whole word. This is much less intimidating for students who are just starting with multi-syllabic words. This same principle is used for spelling, only in reverse. This is a very powerful concept for emergent readers because they can read some very sophisticated words, and are armed with the strategies to spell multi-syllabic words without memorization.  

An activity we work on in class includes word cards. These cards contain words form the very beginning of Wilson. During this activity students made piles of words according to the number of syllables in each word

This is a great opportunity for reviewing the rules for syllable segmentation. Most of the time, students count the vowels and believe that is the number of syllables. many times this works, but we have to be careful of the chicken letter (qu) and of course vowel teams which we will work a lot with later this year. 

Sarah Plain and Tall Geography

A "hidden character" and not just the setting for Sarah Plain and Tall is the prairie. We have had a lot of fun comparing and contrasting Maine (Sarah's home state) to the mid-west planes. Do demonstrate the topography of these regions we made a salt dough map, and today we painted it. I was so impressed when the class chose brown for the prairie, because we have been reading about how dusty and desolate that region can be.

Family Lesson "sneak peek"

This year Jenn Romero (our art teacher) and I are trying to be more collaborative and integrate curriculum objectives. Our first project combines social studies, English, and art. This week we have been discussing families comparing and contrasting families today from families in the colonial times. We are using John Singleton Copley's portrait of the Pepperrell family to discuss change and family.

This is a portrait at the NC Museum of Art that we saw last year during our filed trip, and will visit again this November. We are going to compare and contrast how the family in this portrait looks compared to our modern family (hence the homework of bringing in a family picture). Today we recreated the Pepperrell portrait, and I wanted to share because it came out so cute

I'll share more pictures from this project soon!