Team Building

Dear Families,
We have done many activities over the past week to encourage teamwork and build our collaboration skills. The Great Cup Challenge required groups to work together to manipulate a rubber band which was used to position cups in specific patterns. As one level was achieved the difficulty of the task increased. By the final round students could not use verbal communication while building their structure. On Friday, Lighthouse 4th graders worked in mixed groups to build the tallest spaghetti tower they could, given only spaghetti, masking tape and a marshmallow, which had to be supported at the top of the tower. Students utilized what they had learned the week before when repeating the same challenge over again. We have talked with students about learning from situations that may seem like failures and making improvements as we go along. Check out photos from our adventures at the link provided below.

If you are on twitter we would love it if you would follow us at @MBSTaylortravel to see frequent updates of what we are working on.  I look forward to meeting you at Open House this Thursday 6:30-7:30.

Genius Hour Photos
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B18G3NjBddlxLS1XRFpDWEwzVXM

Dear Families,

We have had a wonderful first few days of school!  We have worked to set common expectations for our classroom and around the school.  Today we read the book, We The Kids, a fun children’s book about the preamble, and wrote our class constitution.  It has also been a lot of fun learning more about our classmates through their presentations of things they enjoy.  

We have begun discussing the idea of perseverance and working hard at learning.  Students have brainstormed some ideas for items they would like to have in our chill space, an area where a student can take a short brain break.  Some items we would like to include are: thinking putty, a stress ball, a fidget cube, and smooth stones.  Please let me know if you would be willing to donate any of these items. We will also have mindfulness coloring sheets, a mesh fidget and a small sand garden in that space.

Here is our Unified Arts Schedule for the first quarter:

Monday: Library

Tuesday: P.E. (sneakers)

Wednesday: Art

Thursday: P.E. (sneakers)

Friday: Art

Thank you for all you do to support your learner!