Learning Mural Day!

 It's our first school day back together in November. That means we reflect on all the learning we did in October. Once again, we could hardly fit all our ideas on our easel!

We collaborated to create representations of our learning to put on our October learning mural.

Here is our finished learning mural!

Starting Genius Hour

 After we came up with wonders about our world for our Wonder Window...

...we decided on topics that we were really interested in. 

We each came up with a wonder that we could stick with. Here are a few!

Delilah is wondering about robots.

Thatcher is wondering about spiders.

Erika is wondering how clothes are made.

Quill is wondering about presidents.

Next we got to work and used sources like PebbleGo, books, and youtube videos to learn more about our topics.

Braxton was wondering about teachers. He put together some questions to interview an expert...he  interviewed me!

We wrote down any interesting facts that we learned about our topics.

When we were finished we recorded three of our favorite facts.

Our next step will be to create some kind of project to help us teach others about what we learned!

Hopes & Dreams

 We are going public with our Hopes & Dreams!

 Normally we have families come in for our Hopes & Dreams conferences so that each child can share his/her hopes and dreams, the family can share their hopes and dreams for the child, and the teacher can share her hopes and dreams for the child. Unfortunately, due to COVID, our in-person conferences were canceled. However, we will still be sharing our hopes and dreams through a shared document. 

During the first few weeks of school we drew and wrote about what we're excited about learning in first grade, as well as what we want to be when we grew up. We hung these as balloons from the classroom ceiling:

To make it fun, we got our pictures taken looking like we're holding onto the string of the balloon:

We look forward to sharing our hopes and dreams!

Our First Learning Mural!

 On the first school day of each new month, we will reflect on our learning from the previous month.

Our brains are growing more than we realize!

First, when we do a learning mural, we brainstorm all the ways that our brains grew in the last month.  In this case, this is our brainstorm list of all the ways our brains grew in September:

We were amazed to see how much learning we have already done in just 21 days!!!

Next, we chose a topic to create, and invited someone to collaborate with us. We talked about our plan, first.

Then we work on that one topic and collaborate to create a representation of that learning, using the materials in our classroom.

We made a label to add to our projects to make our learning clear.

When we finished one project, we crossed that off the list and chose a new one.

We are going to watch a few short ant videos--even ants collaborate to get work done!

 Here is our first completed Learning Mural!

What has been your favorite part of learning so far this year?

Chatterpix

We have been doing such a great job at school these past few weeks!  Room 612 got a special treat today--we learned how to use the Chatterpix app. 

If we learn virtually from home, this is a great app to share a story or to share some learning in a fun way.

I shared one I created, then we created one together and explored the app.

Here we are working on crafting our Chatterpix buddies!  

Tomorrow we'll learn how to upload our Chatterpix buddies into Class Dojo!

 

Sending Encouragement Across the Miles

 Lately we have been noticing how our words can help or hurt.  We can choose to have powerful self-talk, and we can use our words to encourage others. Our words are powerful!

I shared the following quotation with Room 408:

We read the book The Bad Seed by Jory John and noticed how the bad seed became what he told himself he was. When he said he was bad he would do more bad things, when he said he was doing well he did kind things.

We talked about how positive self-talk is very important, especially when things get tough.  I shared with Room 612 how my son, CJ, is in Basic Military Training right now. (CJ is in the middle, 3rd from the left).

 CJ sent a letter to me last night requesting that our first graders send letters to his flight. There are some members who aren't getting any letters from home. We talked about how challenging Basic Training is, especially when no one is sending letters of encouragement.

We worked on writing words of encouragement and pictures to Flight 732. Here are a few examples:

We sent over 45 letters!

Tomorrow we will make a ring of self-affirmations to keep in our safe zone, to give ourselves words of encouragement.

Here is a great video about believing in yourself.