First Days of First Grade!–Part 1

Wow! What a week we’ve had! Is anyone else tired? I might have been ready for bed by 7 pm on Thursday night–but no, I didn’t actually do it. Lasted until 9. Man–these little ones keep you on your toes!

I’ve been working really hard to figure out how best to tell our first week story, as I didn’t want to just make it a big long list ‘o things we did. But we DID have a big long list of things I want to share!! So, I think I’ve decided that for this first post, I’m going to organize the info around the goals we had for our first days together, and explain some of the rationale for why we did them. Ok? Well, then get ready–this one might be long! Get your coffee. Settle in. Read on. And thank you–I so appreciate your time and your interest. 🙂

During the first week of school in first grade (well in any grade, really), there are some key goals that I work towards. This week those goals were:

Students will learn each others’ names (and mine, too!), as well as learn one thing that a friend likes to do outside of school.
Students will learn–and then practice–the expectations for how our room will run.
Students will be guided through discoveries of some key materials in our classroom that they will be using on a regular basis later on.
Students will present their work to the class (in a whole group, small group and partner setting).
Students will begin the year having fun and seeing our classroom as a positive, happy place to learn and grow!

All that being said, there were MANY things we did this week, and honestly I do not have pictures or videos of them all. (As a side note, I’ll add in a quick observation here: first graders do so many more things in the first week than fifth graders do! The number of activities and directions you prepare for each hour of the day with 6YOs is SO MANY MORE than when you have big kids. That’s probably an obvious statement, and even one I knew going in, but I was definitely reminded of it very quickly this week. Like by lunchtime on Tuesday. 🙂 ).

Getting to Know Each Other

As we began the week, we worked to get to know each other, and did activities together like finding friends who like certain activities (soccer, swimming, reading, etc.); being a name detective and finding friends whose names start with different letters of the alphabet; playing name bingo; and playing together. During our first Morning Meeting, we introduced ourselves and shared our favorite colors. And while I don’t have any pics of it (sorry!), we also started sharing our Brag Bags, which they filled at home with 5 things that tell about them. Kind of like the 3 Things project I’ve done in 5th grade. 🙂

Working on Procedures and Routines

Much of our days are spent learning about where things are, how move around the room, how we sit on the rug, how we each take a turn during conversations, how we come into the room in the morning and get started, how we walk in line–you get the idea. These kiddos have been doing a super job of showing what they know from kindergarten and then adding in the “first grade version” of the routines. We’ll keep working this week as we continue to add new things/places to our repertoire.

Lunch count

Supply caddies are kept on the windowsill when we’re not using them.

Picture to remember what caddies are supposed to look like!

Everybody has a hook with their class number on it so they know where to find their things, as well as a special spot on the bulletin board with their number, too!

Special signs hang on our door to remind us of what to do in the line.

Mailboxes

Sign-out board

Morning Routine

Lunch menu and specials rotation on the side of the mailboxes

Reminders of the hallway routine

Hall passes are on magnets and hang next to the door and sign-out board (thanks for the idea, Mrs. Appelbaum!).

How Do We Get Home?

We got started on a chart to remind us of carpet rules. We’ll add to this in upcoming days.

Guided Discoveries

One way I introduce kiddos to the materials in our room is through guided discoveries (which is an idea put forth in the book The First Six Weeks of School, full of SUPER ideas to start the school year). So far, we’ve investigated Power Polygons (which will be used in a variety of ways in Math), colored pencils (which will be utilized on almost a daily basis, and are organized in a special way), scissors and glue (because you know that could be a trip to CRAZYTOWN if we didn’t learn to use those appropriately!).

With Power Polygons, kiddos were given a pile of polygons and given the task to make a creation. They could make it on the table (and we’d take a picture) or they could trace their creation on paper and color it in with crayons. I was AMAZED (but not surprised! ) by what they made! Check it out:

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For our guided discovery with colored pencils, we spent a good chunk of time upfront talking about what they noticed about HOW the pencils are organized, WHY they are like that, and WHY it is a must that we keep them that way. I was really proud that once we were finished, all the pencils were back in the right cups! Way to go, first grade! For the guidance on this discovery, they were asked to create a picture of their favorite place to be, using as many details as they can–so that someone else could imagine being there, too.

Friends work together to find the pencils they want.

Friends at Table 4 get started thinking about the place they will create during their discovery.

Lots of friends at Table 3 chose Six Flags as their favorite place to be. I saw lots of roller coasters and a huge Ferris wheel, too!

The challenge to some friends was to keep adding details when they thought they were “done.”

See the Giant Ketchup bottle on that paper? 🙂

The last discovery this week was with glue (we did briefly talk about scissors, too). We read the book Too Much Glue, and practiced the sayings “Just a dot, not a lot” and “glue raindrops” instead of glue puddles that turn into muddles. Then they got busy creating a flower to represent the many ways they will grow this year. We’ll go back and add their pictures to the middle later, as well as a goal for a way they want to grow. This was an activity for fine-motor development as well as art, as they crinkled the tissue and put it just where they wanted it on the glue dots.

Sharing Our Work

This week we had many opportunities to share our work and start developing the skills needed to be effective speakers and listeners. We did this in whole group, small group and partner situations. I’m already impressed with how these kiddos can turn-and-talk to their partners (we call it EEKK, eye-to-eye-knee-to-knee) and keep their conversations going.

We read this book together on the second day of school, and reflected on our first day.

Students completed a sheet to remember important parts of their first day…

then got EEKK with their partner….

and shared what they had written.

After our colored pencil guided discovery, kiddos had to share with their small group at their table and tell about the place they chose and why they chose it. Then, after an activity based on a book we read called David’s Drawings, we shared whole group. Kiddos also took a few minutes to share their first creation with Power Polygons. They answered the question “What do you like best about your work?” It’s great to see the skills that these friends are coming in with from kindergarten, and how proud they are to share what they’ve created. Can’t wait to see them continue to grow in this area!

Having Fun!

Ok, one last video. It’s related to that last goal of having fun and seeing our classroom as a great place to be. While I hope that everything we do makes them feel that way, I know that when I first told them we’d have a dance party there was definitely a BUZZ in the room! Check us out as we move and groove. And while you can’t quite see it yet in this video, we are working on moving our bodies in responsible, controlled ways. We have 4 rules for when we dance: 1) Keep your feet on the floor, 2) Move your body the whole time, 3) Keep your body movements to yourself, and 4) Keep your voice at a level 1 or 2 so we don’t disturb others’ learning. I should also mention that besides just being fun, dancing allows us to release energy, work on self-control, and will also help us make sure we’re working on gross-motor movements that then lend themselves to other skills (like crossing the mid-line). We are definitely very purposeful in all that we do in Rm. 202!

Ok….so I guess it did kinda turn into a big long list ‘o things, but I’m not sure that could be helped. The first week is always like that–I want to make sure you know all about the great stuff happening in our room! After this one, I’ll be better able to highlight certain things, focus in on the methodology behind it and the ways that our work influences our growth as learners. I hope you’ll be along for the ride!

Headbandz: 5th Grade Style

This blogging challenge has been a good motivation for me to keep up with the loads of things that have been going on that I want to tell you about. And yes, you may have noticed that I am taking a few liberties with how I define it. But hey, rules were meant to be broken, right? (Uh oh…kids, cover your ears…:) ). But so far, I have (including this one) the same number of posts as the days of the month. That equals a win for me.

We’re still doing many great things together to build our 5th grade community. In my mind, community building is really a year-long thing, not just a beginning-of-the-year thing, but for sure we hit it hard right now. So the other day, we played a game that my team had put on our original plan: Headbandz (which was an idea shared by Ms. Turken–she is full of so many amazing things to do!). If you have ever played this game, then you know it’s a ton of fun. We actually have a Disney version of the game here (not surprised, I’m sure!) where you have to guess which Disney character you are. And the headbands are shaped like Mickey ears, which is really cute. 🙂

Ok, but back to our 5th grade version: each kiddo had the name of another student in our class taped to their forehead and the goal was to figure out who it was. The basic rules are that you can only ask yes/no questions, and those questions should be related to the person, not their name (so asking about the way it’s spelled or how long it is, etc., is not allowed).

Once everyone had their name, we got started. And I know I keep relating this game to Headbanz, but Ke’Von reminded us as we got started that it’s really just a real-life version of Guess Who–I totally hadn’t thought of that, and it was perfect!

And yes, in case you were wondering, I played, too. So did Mr. Shelton, but somehow I didn’t get a good picture of him.

I loved how much fun they had with this. They asked to play again, and many mentioned that it was one for their favorite things from the week! We did something really cool related to this next, but I’ll have to tell you about it in another post because I don’t have good pictures of it on my computer yet. What a great reason to come back and visit soon!

Be Square

Here’s a post about another team building activity we did the other day. And boy, did it take some GRIT! Some grit that we had to dig really deep for, too. 🙂

The basic premise of the game is that each person in the group has a folder with pieces of different squares. In total, the group needs to end up with 5 equal-sized squares. The catch? No one can talk. You can’t ask anyone else for pieces, but you can give pieces to other people in your group if you think they need them.

At first, this was a really tricky task! The biggest problem? Everyone was trying to do it on their own! Pretty much the opposite of how the game works! You would not believe the sounds I heard during this activity–it’s too bad I didn’t take any video. Most sounds were moans and groans as they tried to figure out what to do, except for from Table 6 (see above)–their group had “tweeting” or “chirping” sounds happening during this task. I soon figured out that that was the sound of them digging deep to find their grit. Whatever works, right?

However, I mentioned that some of us really struggled, and that was something that could be seen as well as heard. Within the first few minutes, there were twisted-up “thinking” faces, frowns and furrowed brows. One friend was even laying over the seat of his chair upside down. Frustration abounded. But nope–they could not and would not give up. 🙂

Eventually it was time for lunch, and so we left to chow–and left our game just as it was, planning to return after we’d had some time to breathe. As I was sharing the story of our struggle with some friends at lunch, Mrs. Berger said something about needing to see things in another way. This was genius! It gave me an idea for how we could switch things up after we came back.

Once we were back in the room and ready to get started again, kiddos returned to their tables, but they had to sit at a DIFFERENT seat than where they were sitting before. Groups got started again and slowly, but surely, I started to get hands raised (which was the sign that they had gotten it!). 🙂

As we debriefed after we were finished, I asked each group what they thought it was that helped them the most. Without fail, groups mentioned that seeing it from another angle helped them–then could see the puzzle from a different point-of-view and think in another way. Thanks for the suggestion, Mrs. Berger–it’s just what we needed! 🙂

Our First Class Meeting!

If you don’t know about how we do Class Meetings around here, be sure to check out the previous posts Lessons in Democracy and Class Pet Petitions for a little background first….go ahead. I’ll wait for you. 🙂

We had our first real class meeting this past Friday and it went really well! I say “real” because the week before (our first Friday) I walked them through the process of 5th grade class meetings, to either remind or inform them of how we’d be doing them this year.

Here’s our chart after dots were added:

We had a busy week, huh? The lists at the beginning of the year always seem to be a lot longer because we do many more short activities as we’re getting to know the classroom and each other, as opposed to longer projects as we move further into the year. And for some reference, SRI is the Scholastic Reading Inventory and helps assess readers. Students get their Lexile level from this assessment, which helps them as they choose books (which I guess is why so many kiddos gave this a blue dot–signifying that they learned alot from that activity).

I found it really interesting (and surprising, honestly) that so many kiddos chose Appletters as the topic to discuss and problem solve around. And with that many red dots I was dying to find out their thinking about how we could fix it for next time.

After they shared their concerns, these were the things they mentioned that we could work on:

kiddos using really loud voices during the game
some just sitting (not participating or waiting for others to come to them)
not allowing others to join their words
leaving others out on purpose, or replacing their letters with other letters
only trying to make words with friends, instead of trying lots of options
people stepping on each other, running into each other or shoving as we move around the room

Then we were on to problem solving (we actually had a lunch break in between to do some thinking), and came up with some ideas on how we could improve our game the next time we played it:

aim at using a Level 1 or 2 voice (which at our school means whispers or soft voices), so even if we get a little louder we’ll still be at a reasonable volume
give kiddos time to think independently before we move together to build words
make a rule that you could add letters or rearrange them to make new words, but NOT remove letters once they are there
play in another part of our room, or try to use more space instead of clumping together
have a place for “odd” letters (like Z, X, Q, etc.) to go if you can’t build a word, then those letters try to build something.
I also suggested that I would add some other guidelines for what kinds of words they could build.

These were pretty good, and we were excited for the next time we played!

Little did they know that their next opportunity would come that afternoon! The “rules” this time was that their words had to be at least 4 letters long, and could not be names (remember GIBY from last time?). We all agreed that the next time we were much improved. Check out our words the second time around!

Someone said this word was inspired by a book cover they were looking at just before we played our game–funny that they were actually able to find the letters to build it!

Check out the way CAR turned into CRATES–a longer word with more friends involved! Success!

All of the “odd” letters met at Table 4 to see what they could come up with…

…and many hands made for light work.

Definitely not an Appletters “fail” here–that’s a good word!

Check this one out! Another one where someone (Owen!) was just looking at the letters and this came to him! Genius!

What a FABULOUS example about how a group of people with great ideas can change things for the better! What a great start to the year, and an exciting precedent for class meetings to come. WAY TO GO, RM. 202!! YOU ROCK!

An Uncertain Future

I met with my team today–the fabulous Mrs. Hong and Ms. Turken–to talk about how to integrate reading, writing and sci/ss, as well as to update our curriculum calendar. We only had 2 hours blocked out on the calendar, and so in some ways those were really big plans. And we started 45 minutes late. 🙂

So, as we sat down and tried to tackle reworking the curriculum calendar (based on new Common Core standards, district resources and just things we wanted to change), we realized we had lots of work to do BEFORE we could address that problem. You know how it goes, before you can do the job you actually sat down to do, you have to do this and before that you have to do this….we were in that boat.

We are wanting to reorganize our thinking and our schedule to allow for more integration, working Social Studies and Science topics into everything rather than having things so compartmentalized and isolated from each other. But we had plans to UbDize (yep, just made up that word) our SS curriculum and organize our units around common EQs for each quarter. But like I said before, it’s easier said than done.

And then there’s my crazy brain that isn’t just quite ready to think about these things. For one thing, I have to have my space all done before I can planning for what we will do in that space. Since it’s not even August, I do not have my classroom put together yet. Granted, I do have all of my furniture where it will go and have big ideas for where things will go and what it will look like, but it’s not done yet. And I have plans for how I want to redo parts of my classroom library. And I haven’t met my class yet.

That last part is really the biggest piece of the puzzle that makes it hard for me to complete the calendar. So in the mean time, I feel like I am facing an

I know–you’re thinking, “Well, duh, Mrs. Bearden. Isn’t the beginning of the year always uncertain? You never really know what the school year will bring or what every detail of every day will look like.” And no, I don’t have a crystal ball or any tarot cards, and so I guess in a way I always face an uncertain future at this point in the year.

But the reason why it so affects me is because I have such a hard time making decisions about things I’ll do and ways to go without actually knowing my students. So much of where we go and how we get there depends on what my students need, and where they are when we start. I have information and data about these things on paperwork (transition reports, testing scores, Lexile levels, etc.) from previous teachers, but until I really see what it looks like for actual kids in my actual space, I can’t really get a feel for it. (My family has always said that I don’t have much of an imagination–maybe this is proof of that! 🙂 )

But obviously I can’t just not make plans. I can’t not work with my team. I can’t not try to figure it out now, because I owe it to these new students of mine to have at least an idea of where we will go, and how we might get there. If not, then we’ll never get there. And that’s definitely not an option.

Along the way I’ll tweak the plans–adjusting and reworking based on personalities, learning styles, academic and social needs, interests–and I’ll be totally ok with that. And then, at the end of the year, I’ll look back at the plans we made around the table today in the summer and laugh, because of how different they are. But I gotta start somewhere.

How does your “summer brain” work? In what order do you do your work–space first or plans first? How does your team work before school starts to map our curriculum/unit plans? I’d love your thoughts and/or advice! 🙂

Mystery Skype Take 2

Last week we participated in our first Mystery Skype. It was great fun, and we were looking forward to our next opportunity, which came this week! On Friday, we were able to connect with Ms. Copland’s 4th graders–a connection we made from some friends I have on Twitter.

We had some basic knowledge this time around, since we’d done it before, but we were determined to improve on some things. For one, we knew that we’d need to have more maps out, and to already have our computer ready–if we needed a map or some other resource that wasn’t in our atlas. And since I didn’t have pictures from our first try, I knew I wanted to have a photographer ready for this call. It was great to have some teachers comment on our blog in the meantime, too, offering great suggestions for how they do Mystery Skype. Thanks to Mrs. Kneller, Mrs. Venosdale (who was our Mystery Skype call last week!), Mrs. Bowman, and Ms. Ripp (who didn’t comment on our post, but who is definitely one of my go-to teachers on topics like this!) for sharing your Mystery Skype know-how with us!

This time the set up of our call was a little trickier (at least for me!) because there was a time difference to take into account. I cannot tell you how many times I checked and then double-checked if the times we were throwing out were for Central (where we are) or Eastern time. Finally we settled on a 9:40 EST phone call. This meant that I would have less of my class present for the beginning of the call (since we don’t really start school until 8:45 CST), but it worked out ok, I think. We were able to get started with 7 or so students and then the rest joined us as they trickled in.

So we were prepared with our first question to be related to time zone, because last time it gave us great info to start narrowing down where our Mystery Skype friends were located. But then, I had a smart cookie who saw this on the message board on my Skype page where I’d been talking to Ms. Copland prior to our call:

We didn’t need our time zone question anymore, because my friends had already figured out that our new friends were calling from somewhere east of us.

This time we had “stricter” rules that you had to get 10 clues before you could guess the other classes’ location, so we kept careful track of their answers to our questions.

I was pretty impressed by the questions that the kiddos thought of this time, but even more surprised by the initial prediction that Seamus made on the state they were in. Once he knew they were in the eastern US, he said, “I bet they’re in Massachusetts.” It was kind of a fluke, related to the fact that his dad is from Boston, but was indeed the place we were supposed to be guessing! So with Massachusetts knowledge in his head, he began to gear our questions toward MA facts that would help us decide if that was indeed the mystery state.

As the rest of the class starting arriving, more and more kiddos got involved in the work, using the big map on our wall, the computer and the atlas.

I was so impressed by how well this one went! Last time we were a little fuzzy on our own MO geography, and so we knew we needed to brush up on that before this call. This time we knew the answers to the questions they asked, used many resources at our disposal to figure out which questions to ask, and also paid attention to the details we saw in their room to help narrow down our guess on their location–like the fact that someone close to the camera was wearing a Boston Red Sox shirt! We asked them about that, but they quickly pointed out all the other teams represented in the room–including our very own St. Louis Cardinals!

What a great time we had! We’re definitely Mystery Skype missionaries now, and are helping connect other teachers in our school to this great activity! Another 5th grade class is going to visit during our Mystery Skype next week (yep, already have another one on the calendar!) so that they can learn how it works. So cool!

Yay for Mystery Skype!

One more resource I found was this list of other ways to use Mystery Skype, posted by Krissy Venosdale (@ktvee) on her blog, venspired.com. Excited to try some of these others in the future!

The Story of How Alphabox Changed My Life

I love learning. It’s part of the reason I became a teacher in the first place. And as my kids will tell you, we’re all teachers in our room, so I’m learning every day!

Aside from learning my students, however, I learn many things from my colleagues, as well! That’s part of what makes me a better teacher–finding out about new strategies and techniques that are working for others and trying them with my students. And this is how I found out about the Alphabox. Credit here needs to go to my friend and 5th grade teammate, Genie Hong. She introduced me to this strategy the other day and it quickly changed my life forever. Really it did. Keep reading. 🙂

Really it’s pretty simple: and Alphabox is a sheet of paper with boxes that each have a different letter of the alphabet in them:

But then the magic happens.

The Alphabox is an organizer that is aimed at helping students summarize information, by choosing the most important word from a text that they’ve read that starts with each letter of the alphabet. It can be used with anything, really, but we started with some information we needed to read and digest in our Ancient West Africa unit.

A filled-out Alphabox looks like this:

The next step is to put down the book, pick up your paper and try to summarize the part you just read using only the words on your Alphabox! The first time around this was a bit tricky (some would even say hard!), but once we got into it, we go the hang of it, and really started to enjoy it, actually. I’ve had several kids mention that they like how this organizer helps them really focus on the important ideas and it sticks in their brains better than things we’ve done before. I would agree.

Here are some paragraphs we wrote together with our alphaboxes (and sorry for the fact that they have mistakes–I only got pictures of the rough drafts. I recopied them before I hung them up, I promise!):

I love it when you learn something new and it totally rocks your world! I wonder what I did all those years before I knew about the Alphabox. It’s so simple, but so powerful. You should totally try it. We’re using it all the time now. 🙂

Have you ever used an Alphabox to organize your important ideas? Tell us what you think. 🙂

Cahokia Mounds!

On Friday, we took a 5th Grade Field Trip to Cahokia Mounds! Remember how we had just had a Social Studies unit on Mental Models and the Mississippians at Cahokia? Well we topped it off with a trip to visit the site, since it’s just a short bus ride from our school.
Probably best to tell about it with some pictures!

This must be our bus–it’s #202! That’s the same as our classroom! It seems that that number is everywhere lately. It was the room number in two of the last chapter books we read, and now on our bus. Funny.

Getting on the bus. Jack’s excited, can you tell?

We arrive at Cahokia! The weather ended up being about 50 degrees, windy and rainy. Not what we had expected earlier in the week, but we survived. At least it wasn’t 90 degrees outside–which it very well could have been! This was better, even if we were a bit chilly and wet.

See that? It’s Monk’s Mound! We learned all about it during our study, and now we were going to be able to climb to the top! Talk about history in action!

View from the top: way in the distance you can see the St. Louis Arch. Maybe. If you squint. I promise, it’s there.

Inside, at the interpretive center, there was a museum with many artifacts (or replicas of them) that we had talked about during our study. Again, how cool to see what we had read and talked about. Here are some examples of chunkey stones, which are from a game that the Cahokians played. Many chunkey stones were found in the graves of important people from their society.

How to Play Chunkey. In case you were wondering.

Model of an archeological dig

We studied this pot during our unit. It looks like an ordinary pot, but the fact that it has a face on it is important. This meant that they must have had time for art–to make things pretty, not just practical. This tied to the fact that the Cahokians must have had a surplus of food; hungry people don’t take time out for “extra” stuff like this.

Exhibit that showed all that the Cahokians farmed and grew in their city. Some of us were surprised that they were farmers. Many had the mental model that Native Americans were only hunters who ate buffalo.

Mrs. McChesney’s group shot from the top of Monk’s Mound

Thanks, Mrs. Edwards, for being a chaperone! Your group had a great time, I’m sure.

Mrs. Cseri and her group outside. They look warm and cozy, don’t they, even though it was wet and chilly out there!

Mr. Browning with his group in the museum. Again–they look like they’re having a great time learning on this trip!

Before we went back to school, we had a picnic lunch. Yep, outside. In the wind and cold. These kids have never eaten so fast!

Headed back to the nice, warm bus. 🙂

Despite the less-than-perfect weather, we had a great day! We’re lucky to be able to get to see examples of the things we read about in our books. This personal experience made much of it make a lot more sense, and it is solidified for us, now. Thanks to all the adults who made this day possible for us!

We had a great day at Cahokia. Have you ever been there? What did you like? What did you learn? What other field trips have you gone on? Leave us a comment and tell us about it!

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