Academic Update

Hi families!

 Get ready for a photo OVERLOAD! We've been so busy in our classroom growing and taking learning risks! I wanted to share with you some pictures that capture our learning and talk about some amazing things we've been working on. To say these learners come to school ready to work hard, would be a huge understatement. They are happy, determined, and cooperative every day and I am SO lucky to spend my days with them. 

Reading

We have been becoming independent in our jobs during reader's workshop. Students know how to shop for "just right" books independently and how to stay in a learning spot that works for their body. Students have also been holding themselves accountable for their reading jobs by using sticky notes to add to our classroom learning charts with examples from their reading where they practiced the skill. We have been focusing on the importance of rereading books that are "just right" for us. When we reread, we notice things we didn't always notice before. We become familiar with words that once tripped us up and turn them into "snap" words (words that we can readin a snap once we have solved them). Students have also been working on retelling stories- including the important parts but not every single detail. We've also had a fous on reading partners. We've talked about what a good reading partner, looks like, sounds like, and does to keep their reading partner accountable for growing their reading. The students have come so far in our routines for reading and I am so excited to see what else this magical time in our classroom brings this year! Our next focus is direct teaching around decoding strategies for when we reach a tricky word in our reading. We will create a toolbox for ourselves of strategies and know that with one of these strategies, we can tackle these tricky words!

Writing

We've got some serious authors on our hands! These learners are all business when it comes to writing time. We often skip quiet time and keep writing- by student request! It's AWESOME. We have been using authors as mentors to guide us in our writing. As a class we focused on Mo Willems and wrote some Mo Willems inspired stories. Next, we branched out to different authors and tried their "moves" in our books. The students have been experimenting with illustration moves and writing moves to spice their books up. I am SO excited to share their writing with you, although we are still working on handwriting and sounding out our letter and word sounds, we have some amazing ideas and our writing craft is driving our desire to keep writing and allowing us to happily pracitce those other skills that will be coming along during this year of first grade! I have heard from many families that your dragonfly comes home and wants to keep writing- thank you for encouraging them to keep this up, together we are building very happy and confident learners!

Math

We have been so busy during math these days. We've got 12 math games under our belts that help with our fact fluency! We are also working hard to build numbers and visually see place value. From here we have focused a lot on the imporatnce of the number 10 and how our brain loves using that number to help us count and think about more complex numbers. We will continue to work on strategies for solving number sentences. Currenty, we are learning how to use some very useful tools to support us in math. This week we focused a lot on using number grids. We've practiced counting, noticing patterns, and then using it as a tool to help us solve some pretty tricky number sentences. The students have been working so hard in math and it's a very fun time in our classroom!

Buddies

We have been getting together with kindergarten & second grade classrooms next door to us to work on science and inquiry. With this group of learners we have gone outside to think like scientists and ask questions about the world around us. Through our wonders, we were really drawn to what we were seeing in the trails behind our school. Students were interested in the animals that live out there and some of the plants they noticed growing. Now that the weather has become a bit colder, we have been working in the building more and the students have taken on a new interest. This came about after joinging our classrooms for writing time one day (which the students were over the moon about). Students wanted to be able to write people letters in our building. We talked about how we have no system for that in our building. This group of buddies has completely taken ownership of this idea, including asking Mrs. Lucas for permission to create an SMS school post office that is up and running! As you can imagine we have a long way to go with the planning of this system and all the desinging we need to do. As you can see on Seesaw, students are reaching out to families about what supplies we may need to make this happen. So far, we are collecting boxes and envelopes! We have broken into four groups within our large buddie group to tackle this project as it takes off- desiging of stamps, desiginging of the mail drop off, classroom mailboxes, and designing of ways to transport it around the building. This is SO exciting and completely student driven. We are so excited to take on this organic plan with the students and help them dive into their learning in an authentic way. We are so excited to share with you this project as it unfolds and explore some pretty impressive competencies with these learners!
SEL
Our classroom has been celebrating mistakes! Every time a dragonfly makes a mistake in their learning, we stop what we are doing and we learn from our friends and celebrate! We are learning to turn something that can be a very anxious and negative experience and making it seem way less daunting. We are celebrating that we are human and these things happen to all of us! We have been documenting mistakes that help us to grow in our learning! We have been having mistake parades and making our room a very healthy space to take risks because we know only a celebration will come if it doesn't go as planned. 

Enjoy these pictures of our happy days! Have a wonderful rest of your week!