Working together in teams can be challenging but also rewarding as we learned during our project time this week. In addition, we went for our second visit to Queen Anne Manor this week. During our visit, we focused on asking questions and talking with the residents. When we returned to school, we talked about what we had learned from our conversations. It was surprising and exciting to see what and how much we had learned in our short visit. Many students learned about the residents lives, what they did for careers and their hobbies. As part of our visit, I broke students into teams with a leader. It was then the students job to elect a reporter from the group. This was a challenge for several reasons. As we progress in our PBL project, each student will have a specific role in the group, however, right now there are just reports and leaders. Watching the first graders discuss who should be the group reporter was interesting. They all took the discussion seriously and while, there were some small arguments over who got to be the reporter, for the most part everyone was happy with the groups decision. We also worked on creating team contracts this week. Each team set up guidelines that they have committed to. I laminated and posted these contracts in the classroom, so that we are able to reference them easily. Another exciting event we had this week was a visit from our class baby, Austin. Austin and his mom came to our class and we had a discussion about what he was able to do and not do. While we talked, Ms. Kristin showed Austin toys and we got to watch his reaction to various toys. It was a great visit and we are so excited to have baby Austin as part of our classroom community. The picture above is from Austin's visit. This week’s events: 10-22 Book envelopes sent home 10-23 Visit to Queen Anne Manor 10-26 Book envelopes returned to school Hope everyone enjoyed their three day weekend, I know there was a lot of excitement Thursday from the students about having three days off! Although, this was a shorter week, we were incredibly busy in first grade. We finished our fall MAP testing and began Roots of Empathy. The class is very excited to meet our class baby Austin, on Wednesday, October 17th. We have a Roots of Empathy board up in front of the class with Austin’s picture, feel free to come by and check it out.
We will be visiting the Manor again this week and we have begun to prepare questions to ask the residents about their lives. We spent a lot of time talking about our grandparents and how their lives might have been different than ours. The students are very excited to go and visit the Manor again. We will be going on Tuesday, October 16th at 1:00. Since it seems the rain has returned, please make sure to send appropriate rain clothing for our walk. Upcoming events this week: Visit to Queen Anne Manor, October 16th at 1:00 Roots of Empathy baby visit, October 17th at 9:45 Thank you, Ms. Smith What an exciting week! Today we had our first visit to Queen Anne Manor. The students were so excited to share their reading skills and get to know some older members of our community. Two boys were thrilled to know that one of older gentleman shared their same name! There was also an exciting story of living in Singapore long ago and a close run in with a very poisonous snake. Please make sure to talk with your child about their visit today.
During Writer’s Workshop, we wrote about our trip to the Manor. It was interesting to see what students thought of the visit. One student wrote about how beautiful the Manor was and another wrote about the joy of sharing reading with older community members. Thank you to our volunteers who came to the Manor with us. Our next visits to the Manor will be October 16th at 1:00 pm and October 23rd at 1:00. We will need 4 volunteers again to go. Volunteerspot will be updated soon with these dates. Next week we will be beginning Roots of Empathy. We already had a chance to meet with our instructor Kristin Teske during picture day. Both the students and instructor are excited to get started and learn about our class baby, Austin. More details will follow shortly. Finally, if you would like to sign up to volunteer in the classroom, please feel free to do so. We have two spots daily, during Reader’s workshop/Daily 5 and Math workshop. Thank you for your support! Here are a few photos snapped during our visit to the Manor. |
AuthorHi I'm Ms. Smith. I am thrilled to be teaching first grade at Queen Anne Elementary. I am passionate about teaching and learning. Please stop by often to watch us grow as learners and citizens! Archives
March 2015
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