Week 2!

We made it through the first week. It was wonderful for everyone to meet each other and discover our class together. I am so excited for the year ahead!

Thank you so much for returning all of the forms and agenda money.

Two notes were sent home on Friday.

One note is requesting that students bring in a paint shirt to keep here at school for the year. A large, old t-shirt is perfect.

The second note is requesting that students bring in items to decorate their Writer's notebook with. These items can be photos, magazine clippings or words or images important to the student, sketches and other hand drawn pictures, stickers, etc. 

Please let me know if you require a hard-copy of either note again. These items should be at school by Friday this week. Thank you for your support.

Here are some photos that capture some of our community building, and learning from last week and this week so far:

The students collaborated to determine how we can be safe, and respectful during snack, lunch and recess.

One of our first math activities this year was to create this 100 chart together. It was made using small pieces of birch. 

After a few partner tasks in math class we created a set of Math Partner Norms for our classroom. This chart will hang in the classroom all year, and we will make changes as needed. 

We spent time last week deciding how we can create a classroom that is warm and welcoming for all. This picture shows our Classroom Promise. For each promise, a group of students created a pose to show what it looks like. Under the Class Promise you will see Our Appreciations. Throughout the week students are encouraged to look for ways to appreciate their classmates. Our Friday afternoon tradition is to read the appreciations a loud together. 

Our classroom focus for the first few weeks is "Friendship". We have been reading books about friendship, and discussing what it feels like, looks like, and sounds like to be a good friend. On Friday afternoon the Grade Twos shared a "friendship goal" on these speech bubbles. 

The next few pictures are taken from charts that we created together during Literacy. We are working on Reading to Self Behaviors (How to choose a good fit book,  What to do during read to self time, 3 Ways to read a book)

This week our class will visit the library for the first time! Students will choose 2 books to bring home and reading homework will begin next Monday (students will learn what to do at school, and I will update this Blog as well with the simple instructions). Over the next couple of weeks I will be reading with each student. We will determine reading goals, and reading levels. Once students know their current reading level they will bring home a leveled book from the library as well.