Digging Deep and Planting our Feet

I always appreciate when things fall into place in ways that I hadn't planned.

This week was a terrific example.

First, Room 503 is now a full class of 22 students.* We are a group of 15 girls and seven boys. I am excited by the general enthusiasm and cohesiveness of our class and am in awe that we are already almost through our third week of the fall semester!

This week I introduced the phrase "Dig Deep." On Monday, I brought a shovel to class with me as a visual aid to encourage the students to think: to question, to wonder, to be curious, and then to continue to ponder, to notice more, to ask more questions, to think differently and go beyond the surface and their own comfort zones. I asked them to do this in all of their subject areas.

The big coincidence was that we began delving into archaeology in Social Studies and actually did have to dig (not too deep, as we were using shoe boxes as excavation sites)...and we had to differentiate. The students were required to hone their observation skills and determine the differences between "objective" observations and interpretations and inferences. To do this requires a great deal of time, care, patience and thoughtfulness (not to mention the employment of all of our senses), as well as curiosity and creative thinking (a good run-on sentence for a language arts teacher, eh?! I am taking creative liberties with this blog).

These skills are obviously part of life-long learning, but the benefits of beginning to hone them at the start of the school year are great. The acrostic/mnemonic poems below are examples of a few of the students' ability to meld together creative, well-thought out (and well-researched)words to describe the job of an archaeologist:

Archaeologists
Reach
Conclusions
Helping
All.
Educating
Observing
Learning
Or
Gaining
Insight
Supplying
Truth

~*~*~*~

Archaeologists
Research [and]
Conjointly
Happen upon
Abstruse
Entries
Of the underside
Layer
Of
Ground
In
Site
To understand history

~*~*~*~

A
Researcher
Carrying
History
And an
Especially
Organized
Life
Overview
Given
In
Small
Treasures


Besides encouraging the students to dig deep, I have become a "stricternanrian" this week (another liberty I take: creating my own lexicon) - meaning I have really cracked the whip a number of times in order to help the students understand the importance of suiting up, showing up and commiting to all of their work in class and at home. Creating good habits at the beginning of the year in terms of study/assignment work, organization and being present for all that we do in the classroom is integral to the success of each individual as well as our class as a whole.

While the students are reminded every day in Drama to plant their feet as we begin vocal and physical warm-ups, I would like to encourage them to plant their feet in firm resolve to strive to meet their personal bests on a daily basis in all that they do. Each of the students in Room 503 has something important to contribute to our classroom, to our school and to our greater community. I have no doubt that each one of them will shine if they continue to put their best foot forward one day at a time.

Wishing you all a happy, safe and restful weekend -

Cheers,
Ms. Nicky Pitman

*(grammar note: when using single digit numbers in writing, write out the number, i.e. "one"; when using double digits, simply write the numerical form, i.e. above, "22." - just sharing what I, myself, "dug" up this week to make sure I was using - and giving - accurate information).