There is nothing like the first day of school. We are nervous and excited. Eager to meet new classmates and a little sad about friends who have moved on to new schools. Ready to do new things and ready to return to old stories and routines.
We began the day with reading "just right" books. We had a great discussion about our book diet. Do we read all different kinds of books or is our diet a little bland? We identified the genre of the book we are currently reading and recorded it in our Blue Books (more on those in another post.) Talking about genre helps kids recognize patterns in their own reading and we'll explore ways to break out of reading ruts.
We began a math project – collecting data about the Herons and creating visual representations of the data. Each student designed a forced choice question and surveyed their classmates. We'll share the results in a pictograph and circle graph. Those who are just beginning to work with percentages asked 20 folks their question. Students with more experience with data collection and percentages added complexity to the task by asking more than twenty people their question. Some students will use a circle pre-divided into 20ths, some will use a pre-created percentage circle, and some will create the circle graph from scratch using a compass percentage protractor. Whenever we do a math project, there are always many paths through the content.
We also began work on our "This We Believe" statements. Who are we as a class? What do we believe in? What guidelines will we abide by to do our best work? Students worked in pairs to develop 4-5 statements and then worked in a larger group to combine ideas. I introduced accountable talk, a discussion structure that helps students interact more deeply and consider each others' ideas. I was impressed by our initial foray with the tool and look forward to helping students use it more naturally.
We also had a great discussion about the brain and neuron pathways. Our working memory is pretty small and the Herons agreed it would be useful to move some things like how to spell "the" or what 2+3 is out of the working memory and into the part of our brain that just knows things without having to process them. In order to help develop that fluency and make room in our working memory we'll spend about 3 minutes a day developing math fact fluency – the ability to know a fact without having to compute it. This is meant to be serious work but not stressful work. Timing isn't the focus, ease of fact retrieval is. I'm using addition and multiplication charts as well as sheets of facts to help students develop fluency. Students who feel like they "have" a set of facts will move to a new set. I'll talk more about this at curriculum night but hopefully the message of fluency and not speed has come through clearly.
Two of my favorite moments from the day: watching the 5th graders give the 4th graders tours of the room. They very carefully explained all of the "important" things in the room — the plastic skull, the turtle, the pencil sharpener, the potato rock.
We had an extra ten minutes at the end of the day and I introduced the Italian artist Alighiero Boetti to them. One of his pieces involves paper tiles with circle stickers (it's at the beginning of this post). Each edge of the tile is reflected by its adjacent tiles. I showed them one example and the Herons were off – problem solving how to combine tiles, connect tiles and make sure that the designs didn't overlap. It quickly became a group puzzle and we'll continue work on it in the days to come. As a metaphor, it works beautifully to describe these first few days of coming together. We bring our own personalities, talents and knowledge into this space and find all the places we fit — and then begin to extend those relationships.
Here are some pictures of the Herons in action – gathering data, discussing belief systems and, in one case, showing off Jabba the Hutt.
The Rookery 
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