We made it through our first week of school. I hope your child had a great time because I sure did! I have to say that I have the SWEETEST group of students this year. They have received many compliments from other teachers about how wonderful they are. I am truly looking forward to this year. I feel spoiled with the group I have! This week we spent the majority of our time getting to know one another. We kicked off the year with our PYP Unit: Who We Are. Students had the opportunity to share three items that represented who they are. They explained why they are important to them and what the items show about themselves. Students reflected on what they learned about other students. Ask Your Child: What is something that you learned this week about another classmate of yours that you didn't know? See if they can be specific about the item the student brought. :) We also swapped classes this week! Each third grade teacher taught one component to their Who We Are Poster. They have been working hard on them so they are ready for Curriculum Night next week! They can't wait to show you! :) We worked on some graphs to also get to know our classmates. We made bar graphs! They selected their favorite season, favorite color, the number of pets they have, and their favorite subject. We reflected on those graphs to see what we could also learn about our classmates. Our classroom is piloting a new Social and Emotional Learning Program called Sanford Harmony. Part of the program in the beginning is all about working to build a classroom environment that is safe and welcoming. In order to build a classroom environment like that, students have to learn all about one another. Students were assigned a partner and then played a game called "Commonalities." The activity had roughly 20 boxes. Each box had a phrase. They filled in the box if they had that phrase in common. Some phrases included: the month you were born, favorite food, favorite music artist, whether they had siblings or not, etc. Students realized they often had more in common than they thought they would! If they did not have something in common they had to ask questions about that phrase in order to get to know their partner and their differences even more. I am really excited about this program and am looking forward to your support at home with it! I think it is going to be a great addition to our classroom. The pictures below are students playing the game. We finished today with another activity to help us identify our similarities and differences! :) Students drew four circles that looked like a target and in the middle circle they wrote their favorite food. The next circle around the circle stood for Love it, too, the next circle stood for, Like It, and the last circle stood for Don't Like it Too Well. Students went around the classroom and filled in the circle that represented their feelings toward what the student mentioned (see pictures below for a better idea). We had a discussion around the outcome of the activity. I absolutely LOVED one student's response to only one person loving someone else's favorite food. She said, "I noticed that only one person loved their favorite food. This makes that person extra unique." Rather than thinking, "Oh this person is weird," she said they were unique. This is what I am hoping students learn this year- we are all unique and because of that, we are all accepted. I look forward to Curriculum Night next week where I will have the opportunity to share more about our classroom!
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So excited for the start of another year! I look forward to communicating through our classroom's website and Seesaw to show you all the fun activities going on this year. Stay tuned!
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Sept. 14th- First Day of Online Learning
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