The Funky Monkeys Persevere!

Perseverance is one of the “habits of work” targets we have at Tapestry so my Funky Monkeys were already pretty familiar with the concept. After watching Christian Taylor’s video, I shared the NBC Sports article, “Christian Taylor’s Sights Set on World Record after Leg Switch” with my students. It made such a big impact on my students last year I couldn’t resist sharing it again! They were all so impressed with how he didn’t give up after a knee injury. When the going gets tough we ask ourselves, “What would Christian Taylor do?” This became extremely important during our challenging work with triple-digit subtraction with unbundling! Thanks, Christian Taylor!!

We noticed a wonderful correlation to Christian Taylor’s challenge during our read-aloud, The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. In the book, Ivan, a lowland gorilla, lives in horrible circumstances in a roadside circus and mall. He decides to save his elephant friend Ruby, and in the process, must persevere through several challenges. This connected beautifully to a conversation we had about past personal struggles and how we persevered through them. I decided we should write about our struggles and successes and share these stories with younger learners at Tapestry. In February, we hope to take our perseverance writing (“I didn’t quit!” stories) to the Busy Bugs class, a first-grade classroom down the hall.

One of the last pieces of work we did with perseverance allowed us to include our work with the rock cycle.  My kids are pretty familiar with many perseverance quotes, but one in particular worked beautifully:

We talked in pairs and as a whole group about this quote and how it applied to the work we were doing with Classroom Champions and the rock cycle (specifically weathering and erosion). Finding this quote was quite fortuitous!

Standards addressed in this challenge:

·      CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.3

Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges.

·      CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.3

Write narratives in which they recount a well-elaborated event or short sequence of events, include details to describe actions, thoughts, and feelings, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide a sense of closure.

·      CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.2.1.A

Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., gaining the floor in respectful ways, listening to others with care, speaking one at a time about the topics and texts under discussion).

·      CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.2.1.B

Build on others' talk in conversations by linking their comments to the remarks of others.

·      Next Gen Science standards:

2-ESS1-1. Use information from several sources to provide evidence that Earth events can occur quickly or slowly.