We are leaders and good sports

A huge part of the beginning of the school year is establishing a positive classroom environment and giving students an active role in doing so. The class created their own class mission to live by daily that "they are leaders and good sports." Students were each given a special leadership role and were able to apply for a new role this past Friday. They had to give a speech to the class to tell them why they'd be a good fit for their leadership role and how they would show responsibility in their new role. 

Classroom routines and expectations have been set and they are now given more responsibility to follow them. Students are now leading the morning meeting and helping lead classroom discussions, such as math talk. 

Leaders are often recognized and rewarded:) We have leaders of the week for each habit. Once all students receive leader of the week for all 7 habits  the class earns an ice cream sundae party. At the beginning of every week students get to "cash out" their dojo points from the previous week at otter den. There are small trinket items the can buy or they can buy special rewards such as; no HW pass, lunch with the teacher, teachers assistant for 15 min, play the wii with staff member, etc! 

First tech project

We started simple with our first tech integration project. Students created "all about me" collages to teach others more about themselves and get comfortable navigating the devices. 

A look into lit

Here's a look at our literacy stations. We follow the daily five, incorporating; writing, reading, listening, word work and buddy reading into the literacy block. After read to self students work on retelling the beginning, middle and end in their notebooks. Word work activities follow the letter land pacing and vary. Below they are using magnet letters on iPads to create words in the word family provided. In writing, students are given a prompt to independently respond to. For listen to reading they go on mobymax.com where they read a story at their level and have to respond to questions. During guided reading they are grouped by ability to work on the strategies necessary to help build their reading skills.

I know, it's about time!

Now that we are halfway into the first quarter I figured it was time to post!! There has been a lot of fun and a lot of learning happening! Below is a look at math stations during the first few weeks. We focused on being able to count to 120, number sense(one more, one less) and being able to add and subtract with in 20. We are now working on using a variety of strategies to solve math word problems for addition, subtraction and partner unknown equations. We are also looking at how addition and subtraction are related.