I think we’ve had a great start to our school year.  I hope your children are feeling the same way.  We’ve had fun getting to know each other.  We’ve created two different glyphs and several different graphs. We’ve done a couple of different writing projects and we’ve shared some great books together.

S.E.L  – Learning About Each Other to Strengthen our Community

We’ve played The Name Game a few times to learn each other’s names. Knowing names is an important start to making friends.  We read Andy, That’s My Name and A My Name is Alice to start our exploration into the importance of feeling known and included.

We also read some books about starting school and being new, either to the school or to the grade. After reading The Day You Begin, Unicorn Thinks He’s So Great and Unicorn Is Maybe Not So Great After All we began to realize we each have to share our stories so we can truly get to know each other.  Guesses and assumptions don’t work that well. We’re realizing, the more we share the more we find what we have in common.

We’ve also been sharing some of our hopes about what will happen this year and what we’ll be able to do at the end of 3^rdgrade.  We’ve been thinking about things we like and things we find challenging connected to learning.  We’ll use these discussions to learn more about rights and responsibilities in the weeks to come as we establish classroom routines and rules that will allow us to each show our best selves.

Roaming the Known

This week in math we’ve been roaming the known.  We’ve been reviewing two-digit addition and subtraction.  We’ve created several graphs and taken an assessment to see what parts of 2^ndgrade math stuck.  As I have reviewed the daily work, it seems to me that the children have a lot of understanding that doesn’t show.  The ways the problems are worded are unfamiliar and the directions may have been confusing.  As you look at your children’s work – please let mistakes go at this point in the year. We are just getting to know each other. We’ll learn how to communicate clearly in the next few weeks and then your children’s real abilities will show.

Navigating the Classroom Blog

At the end of each week I will send home a letter sharing some of the things we have done throughout the week.  Please look for it in the front of your communication folder.  My goal is to give you some talking points so you can extend your child’s learning at home. On that same day you’ll find a similar parent letter on our blog – 3enews.edublogs.org  As you can see, this one is illustrated with photographs from our classroom.  Scroll down a bit, and you’ll be able to see some of the books we’ve shared in the classroom this week. That’s another thing to talk about with your child.  And this time, if you scroll a bit further down, you’ll see a place where you can subscribe to get notification about postings.  Please do that so you don’t miss out on any of the posts.

Presently, last year’s students’ blogs are still up and will be for a couple of weeks.   Soon, your children will be setting up their own blogs. We’ll have time each week for the children to create posts.  That doesn’t mean they’ll finish one each week, but I know they’ll try.  Blogging is a different type of writing and most children really like the idea of creating digital texts to share with a wider audience.  Once the student blogs are up and running you can share your child’s URL with family far away and they can become more involved with this year’s activities.

Bits and Pieces –

• We’re reading 8 Class Pets + 1 Squirrel ÷ 1 Dog = Chaos as our first chapter read-aloud.  Ask your child what is happening in the story.
• We had our first fire drill and your children were quiet and respectful.  They really were amazing role-models.
• We’ll be celebrating International Dot Day in two weeks.   We are looking forward to “making our mark” to see where it takes us.