Up, Up and Away

For the past week we have been working to create our hopes and dreams for the school year. To get inspired about creating these yearlong goals we read the book, Nobody Owns The Sky, which tells the story of Bessie Coleman, the first African American aviator. She set a goal and took small steps to make it happen. The second graders then thought about their own goals and stated what they would do to make that goal a reality in the year to come. To go along with the idea of flight, we all created hot air balloons which will hold our hopes and dreams and float above us as a constant reminder to reach for our dreams and do our best.

We also began our first unit in Bridges Mathematics. The second graders are looking at ways to sort and analyze patterns and are being introduced to the Mathematical Habit of Mind of making Conjectures and Generalizations. This is one of the effective mathematical learning experiences that the teachers have been learning about in our Best Practices in Mathematics studio days brought to us by the Teachers Development Group. In addition the students have been exploring math materials in the Bridges Work Places. You can see what amazing inventions and explorations they have been coming up with by viewing the video. I shot the footage with our new iPad!

To celebrate Dot Daywe made crowns that we wore to our first Swarm Party as a whole school in the gym on Wednesday morning. We sang our new school song and celebrated how we all help to make our school a great place to be by being safe, kind and responsible.

The students began a month long unit of study on African Animals this week. Each week they will head to a different workshop in one of the four Synergy classrooms where they will learn about animals that live in the ground, water, bush and trees and create their own lift-the-flap animal book as they travel through Africa!

We are off to a great start and look forward to a fantastic year in Synergy!