Good Afternoon,
We are off to a great start. We started the day with an all school assembly. During the assembly, we were all introduced to the school's new behavior management system known as PBIS. The school has adopted the slogan "We ROCK!" The school will be sending home more information about this initiative and structure. The PBIS will go hand in hand with the Responsive Classroom Approach that I use in my classroom. The four ideas that we will focus on are:
After the assembly, we gathered in the room for our Morning Meeting. This is something that we will do at the beginning of every day. It is a great way to bring everyone together to start our day and it also allows me to focus on both the academic and social curriculum. During our meeting we sang a Hello Song (to learn names), shared an important summer event, talked about the rainstick and its purpose, and finished with the Peanut Butter song.
We then went on a tour of the playground and learned about the boundaries (for safety reasons). We also talked about a lot of the new additions to the preschool playground. On the way in we stopped by the bathrooms and talked about appropriate expectations and behaviors. Once we were back in the room, we had snack as a class.
Today marked the first day of Reader's Workshop and CAFE. This is a new structure and instructional approach that I am implementing this year. I spent most of last year and a lot of this summer learning about these approaches. I am excited about it and feel it is what one would consider "best practice" in terms of reading instruction. If you would like to read more about it, please let me know. During Reader's Workshop I introduced the idea of reading a book two different ways. We talked about using the pictures and the words to read the book. Tomorrow we will look at a third way. I also introduced the ideas that readers check for understanding, cross check, and tune into interesting words. Students also had time to explore their book bins and practiced the strategy called "read to self".
Today we also had guided discovers with pencils, erasers, crayons, scissors and glue. We also took pictures for our class book and practiced a fire drill.
We finished the day with a guided discovery of the playground equipment.
All in all it was a great start to what I know will be a wonderful year. Please remember that I will post on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays of each week.
REMINDERS:
*Let me know if you want a paper copy of the blog sent home.
*Please return the volunteer forms that I mailed to you last week.
*Your child has a plastic homework bag (Ziploc) in their school bag. Please go through the papers, fill them out, put them back in the bag, and return it to school tomorrow.
Have a great evening!
Peace,
Tommy
