The school year, though only fourteen hours old, is already teaching us more than was scripted. While we were busy working on outlining story maps from the summer reading novels, exploring hundreds charts, and learning about long, long, ago in history, unplanned lessons of the year were emerging. Though the planbook called for the boys to register for Edmodo, a site we will be using for project assignments and collaborative activities, and to view several slideshows created by students last year on PhotoPeach for next week's digital assignment, other lessons crept in.
Patience.
It first shone through yesterday while students worked on our classroom challenge puzzles. Nine puzzle pieces, with repeating images, solved through trial and error (four line up, but the final five need to be rearranged)...and trial and error (three do not fit)...and trial and error (as eight line up, but the final piece has no slot)...Watching the students' steady persistence pushed a critically important aspect of the learning process into the limelight: frustration. Learning how to plot out a new story web, locating a "double-digit even number with the sum of twelve and the difference of zero" on a hundreds chart, registering for a new website to retrieve an assignment which requires access of another website with a unique login, or correctly arranging stingrays in a 3x3 puzzle all create a great deal of frustration--and learning. While well-supported articles are stressing the trouble our young generation has with delayed gratification, I have been impressed with the patience already displayed by these Ninth Agers, and I am eager to see what lessons hour fifteen of the school year brings. 
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