“An interesting piece of work, freely chosen, which has the virtue of inducing concentration rather than fatigue, adds to the child’s energies and mental capacities, and leads him to self-mastery.” -Maria Montessori
This week we had so many wonderful opportunities to see children recognizing their mastery of work. We take time every day to observe children working to see when they are ready for something new or when they may need help reviewing something. Each Friday at their conference, we also go through their work individually to see how they are progressing, but the best way to discover a child has mastered something, is when they tell us! Students take such pride in their work and when they have figured out everything they can about a material, they are so excited to ask for a new lesson! Below you will see two instances of that from this week!
Lower Elementary
This week, the first years were introduced to the number line! They have learned to measure with it and will soon be learning to add and subtract with it. These first year students were measuring how far they could jump forward, backward, and sideways!One of our third years was SO excited to learn how to divide on paper that I had to put it into the blog! After working extremely hard every day for two weeks on dividing with the pegboard, she told me she felt she had mastered it. I observed her doing some equations and helping friends, and agreed that she had. This week, she attended a review lesson with some fourth year students to learn this work! We love seeing students working towards their goals and feeling confident in sharing when they are ready for a new challenge!
Upper Elementary
Our fourth year students are finishing up their study of viruses by writing their final copy of a research paper and creating a 3D model of their virus. These students are using clay, Popsicle sticks, and hot glue to make their models. These will be displayed next week!This picture is a bit tough to see, but it is some great work! Our sixth grade student has been working with square roots and was so excited to learn how to extract a quadrinomial from a square root in the ten millions! We began our lesson using the pegboard and pegs and our student realized he could do it all in his head and on paper! After we solved the “active” portion of our equation, we checked our answer by squaring the number and subtracting it from the radicand to find our remainder!
Enrichments
These students are practicing recorder songs to try to get their black belts in “Recorder Karate” with Ms. Lisa!This first year student is completing her critique in art class. She shared how she completed her project and others offer insight into how she may improve next time or what they liked about her project!
REMINDERS:
Monday, March 2 – NO SCHOOL DAY FOR ELEMENTARY – We will hold our Student-Led Conferences. Double check your time here!
