I’m not sure how this is possible, but it seems that my class just had our first class meeting on Friday. I know that’s really not the case, but I guess all the meetings we have had have been either impromptu or have followed a different protocol than is typical to Rm. 202 because when I opened up our class meeting flipchart the other day the last one was from May 2015!  WHAT?

Well, regardless, we sat down to have a meaningful class meeting, following a protocol that everyone new because even if we didn’t do it this year “officially,” everyone had followed the same procedure in 1st grade.  (In case you don’t remember how we do class meetings in our school and district, check out this post, as well as this one where I wrote about it previously, then keep reading. 🙂 ).

We went around our circle and our chart dots looked like this when we were finished:

A comment for the sake of transparency: our original chart got lost so I recreated the dots as I remember then.  There may be a few in the wrong place, but this is generally the result after our choices. Sorry, friends!

While often the red dots indicate times where our class was having trouble behaviorally, as we talked through the dots for this class meeting, we figured out that the red dots next to “subtraction in math” were related to the fact that the math we were doing was tricky (more on that later!).  The red dots next to the others were things we had already worked through earlier in the week.  All-in-all, this chart shows a pretty great week for Rm. 202!

As is part of the typical class meeting protocol, the last part of the meeting is having kiddos write me a “Friday note” where they share whatever is on their mind: something from the meeting that they didn’t get to say, something from the week that they think when well (or was hard for them personally), an idea they have for something in our classroom, a question, what they’re doing over the weekend, etc.

Then I spend time over the weekend answering their notes.  I was SUPER impressed that many of our notes were related to how kiddos knew that they needed to work on not getting Xs next week.  A couple of friends asked for help with certain subjects, and many kiddos told me about weekend plans.  And yes, as happens at least everyone once in a while, someone’s note just told me I was the best teacher EVER.  Loved that one, of course. LOL

As with any class, the Friday note is perhaps one of my favorite pieces of communication with my students.  I learn something every week, and I find that kiddos share things in this venue that they may not feel safe to say to me or have time to talk to me about during the course of a regular, busy day.  These notes are so personal and give EVERY kid a chance to have a voice in our community.  Friday notes #FTW!