I want to thank all of you, who were able, for coming to the informational meeting and potluck last night. It was nice to start off the 1st week with a gathering and a chance to get to know all of you. Please let me know if you have any unanswered questions. I truly feel this is going to be a fabulous year and a special group of students and am quite excited for things to come.
The 1st week has flown by. On Tuesday, Katie Babic came in to review a talk regarding zones of regulation in regards to our personal mood. We are creating a chart that will help kids identify how they are feeling and strategies to help them regulate their behavior, mood and/or feelings. If you would like to know more about this, please check out this link. The students had each special this week with the exception of French (which will start at the end of September). I asked that each specialist teacher come to our classroom to explain their expectations as we enter their space (the gym, art room, music, etc.). These conversations are important and allows all of us to remind each other what is the desired expectations of each class.
We read a few more 1st week of school books during our class read a loud time. The 1st was The Book With No Pictures by B.J. Novak. It is exactly as titled and has no pictures. I used this book to get the kids laughing and to allow them to see me being goofy and having fun at my own expense. The 2nd book was This School Year Will Be the Best! by Kary Winters. This book helped us think about things we may want to see or accomplish this year and got kids thinking about their own goals. The final book was Dear Teacher by Amy Husband. This book had a student writing his teacher a variety of notes, throughout the summer, on why he wouldn't be able to make it to school for the 1st part of the school year. We have introduced many of the tools that we will use throughout the year. I use a process called guided discovery. It allows the students to explore the items, think about ways of using them, and developing shared expectations on appropriate use. There is a bulletin board in the classroom that has a lot of their work from this displayed. The kids also completed posters about themselves. These can be found in the hallway outside our room.
As I mentioned above, the kids did create goals for themselves. I call these our Hopes and Dreams. The students all decided on a hope or dream they had for the coming year. They then illustrated these and shared them with the class today. We will use these as a guiding force in developing our shared expectations for behavior in the classroom. This allows the class rules to be both relevant and personal. The kids illustrations can be found in the library area of our classroom.NOTES:
*This week's video will be posted on Tuesday's post (no school Monday).
*I type the post quickly during lunch. Please excuse any typos.
*There is no reading homework tonight. Enjoy the long weekend.
That is all for now. I hope you all have a great weekend. We are off to a great start!
Peace,
Tommy
