We had the second and final set of Student Led Conferences on April 23rd and 24th, where we got to see how the boys are doing and, more importantly for the evening, what they’ve been doing. Finn was up first and he’d worked out a special deal with his teacher, Ms. Jessica, that he could start with the 100s Board math job because he really wanted to show it to us and he wanted to make sure he’d have time.
He was very excited that he managed to get through it all. He’s not actually required to do the whole job when showing it to us, but he is a little obsessed with this particular job.
Next he showed us his folder with some of his work.
My favorite was this life cycle of a butterfly done in pasta. I love Kindergarten.
Next we played “Kindergarten Yatzy” which was actually quite fun and is a good way of practicing addition.
Bruce, of course, plotted how many times each number came up and later graphed it for us.
We were running out of time in Finn’s math class, but we took a quick look at his notebook.
And his journal.
And then looked at a couple of his things around the room.
Over in his literacy class he showed us this word-making game.
After the conference we headed down to the cafe to try out food from the new lunch program (very good!) and get some stuff at the book fair. Author Diane Lang came back for a return visit and Bruce got to hold her pet tarantula, Terra.
Ezra held her, too, but she was moving pretty fast so Diane was trying to direct her path.
Ezra’s conference was the next day. We started in his math class and he showed us some of his work.
And the silkworms they’re observing.
He showed us some math jobs. Here’s his list of what he wanted to show us.
Big numbers:
Beaded pyramid chains:
We skipped the 100s board since we’d just done that with Finn the day before and went straight to his Fact Factory folder — a tough fit for him because it’s timed addition and subtraction problems. Doing things quickly in a fairly chaotic environment is not his strong suit but he’s working on it.
Over in literacy, we took a look at his journal. Here’s a recent entry about the camping trip.
His most recent writings are much longer than those from earlier in the year — good progress!
Here’s another about a play date with his friend, Jack.
And one about having nothing to write about.
We also got to see the finished product of his book about Space. He was very proud.
After that, we headed to our traditional post-conference (boys’ pick) for dinner — Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles. Thank goodness there are only two conferences a year; their food is delicious but it’ll kill you!