Week of January 21

Swim continues to go well for the students.  What a great opportunity we are giving our students!

Perseverance, that is something that is imperative to teach children these days.  Since many of our students find things come easily to them, the need to struggle and get praise for their effort is important.  The need to learn from mistakes and develop a mindset of growth is imperative.  We are trying to instill this in our students through a variety of challenging activities.  Our goal is that by the end of the year, doing something that is especially difficult will not be so daunting to the students. 

Every Friday, we are asking the students to complete a challenging math activity.  For the first activity, the students were able to work in small groups, but today's activity asked them to work on their own.  The task was to use 1 continuous piece of 3 cm paper to create a bookshelf with 4 shelves, having 4 cm between each shelf.  They could use tape to hold it together, but could not tape any extra parts to it.  We had 12 students in the 3-5th grade classes who were able to complete it in some way, with many others who put forth a good effort.  Here are some pictures of the students as they worked through the problem and some of the finished products.