November so far...

Last week we were lucky enough to have our Literacy Coach, Susan Atcheson, in our school to help support us with our literacy activities. She read books with us, helped us with sounding out letters, and also worked closely with students during our daily writing time.

Also if you've been following on Instagram, dominoes are the new cool thing in Room 8! What started out as two students just playing and building towers with dominoes grew into a challenge that spanned a week and a half! At first the challenge was just to build a line without knocking it over, but that wasn't hard enough so they decided to build a line across the room.  It was great to see them using their words to express how important this project was and giving their classmates polite suggestions about the safest way to move around the domino road.  Then it became a round table challenge and this is what lasted for over a week.

It may look easy but these students would sit there silently concentrating on their task during choice time.  At first they would talk and move around till someone bumped the table but then their strategy started to evolve.  They realized just how hard it was going to be to make it all the way around. They all had to be leaders and be responsible for their own section until they connected. 

So many times they would almost reach their goal but someone would bump or shake and down they would go!  But these kids would just keep going and start all over again.  It took almost two weeks, but they got there! This was an amazing example of how play can teach teamwork, sharing, self-control, and how to just keep on going even when things seem impossible!