Week 3

It was great getting to see a lot of you at the Back to School Picnic and also at Back to School Night! The first graders were very excited to see the bookmarks on their desks on Friday morning, and they put them to use during our Daily 5 read to self time! 

For those of you who weren't able to attend Back to School Night the conference sign up is posted outside my door and I will also post a picture of the sign up and you can email me to set up a conference time. 

I decided to start the third week with a "band-aid activity." Most people believe that “fairness means that everyone gets the same”; whereas in reality “fairness means that everyone gets what he or she needs.” This is a tough concept to grasp, especially when you are 6 years-old and just beginning school. In an effort to introduce this idea to my amazing first graders, I had them all imagine they had a boo-boo (most of them didn't have to imagine). Once everyone had their imaginary (or real) boo boo in their head, I gave everyone a band-aid on their hand and asked if their boo-boo was healed. Most kiddos had boo-boos on their knees and some had imaginary broken bones. The majority of the class was not healed by the band aid on their hand. The point is, we all get boo-boos and rarely are they all in the same place. We all have things that we need extra support or guidance in and rather than all get a band aid on the same place, we get band-aids where and when we need them. This idea of equity is one that we will be reinforcing a lot in the classroom and refer to as "band-aid moments." 

The first graders have already increased their Daily 5 stamina from 3 minutes to 15 minutes! They are doing awesome...If we continue at this rate they will be able to read/write for the whole day! With our writing we have been working on stretching out our stories and adding details. Using our hand as a reference we want to make sure that our story has (who it is about, where it takes place, 2 events, and how it ends). This strategy also helps build in the punctuation. They are all getting more comfortable sharing their writing with each other and it is pretty amazing to see how proud they are of their work!

In math we are working on writing number sentences and using visuals to show our mathematical thinking. They are already beginning to use mathematical language "I know this is true because..." "I agree with ____ because..." Being able to talk about mathematical thinking and being able to show it is something we will continue to build on a daily basis. 

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! 

Here are some photos from the fabulous learning community in Room 112: