As a staff, we have decided to make one of our goals to focus on instructing and modeling the 7 Cs throughout the school
year. Each month we will be focusing on a different area of the 7 C's curriculum. For example, in August we utilized our assembly time to discuss and review the "culture" at Brighten. The classroom teachers also discussed the importance of building a culture in our classroom and the behaviors to promote it. We will continue to focus on a different "C" (character, creativity, community, critical thinking, committment, culture, and curiosity) each month. We are looking forward to celebrating the 7 Cs regularly, and we hope that this helps to meet our students' emotional and academic needs. The article below is so very true.... How A (Very) Little, Daily Favor Can Change Your Life Want to make the world a better place? Want to get a leg-up at work? Good -- you can do both. Enter the five-minute favor. The concept is no more complicated than its name alludes: Take five minutes out of your day to do something that'll benefit another person. That's it. "Even if you have no time, you can make time for five minutes," says Adam Rifkin, co-founder of PandaWhale and the man who gave a name to this small act of kindness. Rifkin began to perform daily, five-minute favors when he first got started in Silicon Valley in the late 1990s. "I would regularly see people who had a lot of money or power or were very successful, and they would take time to do these favors that really didn't benefit them. And I thought it was amazing." The reason it works, Rifkin says, is because of its counterintuitive economics: "It doesn't cost you much, but it can make a big difference in somebody's life." We're used to doing nice, selfless things for our family and social networks, but this is a less common practice in the workplace. It's a paradigm that should gain traction: Office altruism will cultivate your professional life. "It makes you more bonded and attached to the people you're interacting with." And by doing so, Rifkin explains, you'll be building a professional support structure. For Rifkin, a go-to favor is making introductions. "I'll find somebody who would really benefit from knowing someone else and I’ll connect them." However you decide to give is worthy -- as long as it's genuine. Professionals in particular will recognize the generosity behind your actions, since in an office culture, we're all so pressed for time. "Time is the currency that no one can really buy more of," Rifkin says. "If you're paying with your time rather than paying with cash, it's more meaningful. Especially when you're busy." And -- bonus! Doing good for others means they'll want to do good for you: We're psychologically wired with a drive to reciprocate. But the practice doesn't involve keeping score. It's not a transaction. "At the beginning you will be paying up front -- it's a pay-it-forward way of life." Even if you don't get a favor in return, you'll reap some big benefits. Giving has strong ties to longevity and happiness. Better yet, a recent study found that giving to those with whom you share a social connection (like the coworkers you spend your most of your weekdays with) can improve these happy feelings that come with being generous. Plus, the action might be your ticket to overcoming a work slump. "What's nice is that it gets you out of routine. It forces you to think about somebody else." These are just the kinds of breaks that Tony Schwartz so heartily advocates when it comes to productivity. You'll be giving your brain the opportunity to switch gears and prevent burn out. "It kind of clears your mind for a bit," Rifkin explains. "It is a form a meditation in a sense." And if you believe in karma, well, there's always that. As Twyla Tharp puts it, "Generosity is luck going in the opposite direction, away from you. If you're generous to someone, if you do something to help him out, you are in effect making him lucky. This is important. It's like inviting yourself into a community of good fortune."
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Please send in $8.00 so your child can keep up-to-date with homework assignments and school events! No one EVER wants to feel left out! We begin our exploration of Latin America today! If you have any resources about Latin America that you would like to share, pertaining to any of the places below, please email me. Having real artifacts makes learning valuable! I have spent hours compiling a PPT (attached below) that includes many video clips and realistic pictures of the places students need to locate on a map. Here is our first standard: SS6G1 The student will locate selected features of Latin America and the Caribbean. a. Locate on a world and regional political-physical map: Amazon River, Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, Pacific Ocean, Panama Canal, Andes Mountains, Sierra Madre Mountains, and Atacama Desert. b. Locate on a world and regional political-physical map the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela. As we work through the PPT, students will label their numbered map. A quiz later in the unit will be similar to this, so please work with your child locating these features. I have also attached various blank maps to practice this skill at home!
Today we will continue working with the four quadrant coordinate plane. We will watch a video:
http://learnzillion.com/lessons/490-graph-points-on-a-coordinate-plane (3:02) learning how to graph points by using a coordinate plane. Students complete video graphic organizer while watching the video, recording problems in different sections – problems for review, mistakes to avoid, core lesson, and guided practice. Students will practice plotting points with self-correcting grids. Homework will involve more plotting! Today should be our last day of MAP testing! MAP testing continues this week - finishing up the math test for a few and the reading test for about half of the grade level. I am very excited to analyze the final data to adjust instructional needs.
Because of the time involved in taking the MAP tests, our social studies unit on Latin America has been delayed a few days. I hope to begin on Thursday, depending on our progress today. I will be out on Wednesday, as my husband will have his third surgery on his Achilles Tendon. Instruction won't miss a beat as Mrs. Murphy will be my sub and teach Science in my room for the grade level! We begin our study of the 4-quadrant coordinate system with a foldable that will help define our vocabulary: coordinates, origin, x-axis, y-axis, ordered pair, x-coordinate, and y-coordinate. Our first standard focuses on knowing which quadrant an ordered pair is located.
We will watch and take notes with the following LearnZillion video learning about the coordinate plane. http://learnzillion.com/lessons/489-understand-the-coordinate-plane-as-horizontal-and-vertical-number-lines (3:02) Students will complete the video graphic organizer, recording problems for review, mistakes to avoid, core lesson problems, and guided practice problems. Homework: Labeling quadrants for coordinate pairs |
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April 2015
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