What Do You Do All Day Anyway?: Phonics

So far in this series, I’ve shared our journey from our first Heggerty lesson through to our 3rd try with getting it right, after doing some reflection and thinking about videos of our lessons.

Kids have been asking about what part of our day we will record next, and that has yet to be determined (there are so many options!), but in the meantime I thought I’d share another part of our day that has been going pretty well. It’s kind of a big deal in first grade to understand how phonemic awareness and phonics work together to help them understand words and apply that knowledge to reading and writing.

We started a new program this year and I’m excited for how it’s going so far, as well with how it has affected kiddos’ thinking already. Let me share a little about what we do with phonics every day in Rm. 111. Oh, and since you may be wondering (because I know for a long time I was unsure, too) about the difference between phonemic awareness and phonics, here is a chart from Heggerty’s website to explain how they are different but related:

Screenshot 2018-09-30 18.10.47

First of all, I feel like I should introduce you to a very good friend of all of us in Rm. 111–Rasheed the Lion!

Isn’t he fabulous? He has a SUPER name with lots of interesting features, like a capital letter, a digraph, a long e sound (made with double letters!) and a consonant at the end. It has 2 syllables, 7 letters, and is a pattern of tall letter, 2 small letters, tall letter, 2 small letters and another tall letter. We’ve been learning LOTS of things just like that about our own names, too, and have put them all on our word wall.

One important thing we did at the beginning of our study was learn how to correctly write our names AND how to spell and write the names of our friends! They are important words in our lives and we need to know how to use them quickly and accurately. In our Rug Clubs (which are small groups we work in while we study phonics), we practiced with white boards and markers (which every first grader LOVES) and a “marked-up” version of our name that showed us exactly how to form each letter.

Each student got their own name written in this form so they could practice how to write it quickly and correctly. At this point, many first graders were still working on using lower case letters in their names.

See Rasheed’s pencil? It’s because he knows how to use Professor Words when he studies names, and we do, too! We looked at our own names and were super-smart professors as we shared our thinking with the rest of the class. We pointed out vowels (short and long), as well as blends and digraphs, as well as number of syllables and anything else that was interesting.

After we had studied everyone’s names (including names of our friends in Rm. 112), we started to study other words in the same way. We call these words SNAP words, because we should be able to say them in a “snap.” Most of them are words that we learned in kindergarten, and we are reviewing them before we begin to learn new first grade words.

Most recently, we’ve been working on sorting words by a variety of features. Students have worked with their carpet partners to identify vowels (short or long, how many, which ones, etc.), number of letters, number of syllables, etc., and then shared their sorts with the class.

Here’s a fun phonics game for you to play: can you name the way these words are sorted? Leave us a comment to tell us what you notice about how we chose to sort each group! We’d love to hear how smart you are about phonics, too!

How were these words sorted? What do you notice?

Here’s another one. Look carefully–it’s different than the last one!

This one looks easier than it is! How did Rm. 111 friends sort these SNAP words? Tell us in the comments!

One last thing…check out our word wall as of last week. We were AMAZED that we added 37 SNAP words to the wall! Can’t wait to watch it fill up with more words that we can read in a “snap!” Stay tuned!

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week of September 24, 2018

This week seemed to be extra busy with reading! We were able to add 17 books to our display, and we’re SO CLOSE to 100!! Hoping to hit it this upcoming week and share the good news with you on the blog next time.

But for now, here’s what our wall looks like:

We added lots of different titles:

I think my favorite story from the week actually comes from a first grader, not a book. It’s a story of perspective, and taught me something about how adults see things differently than 6-7yos. Let me explain…

On Wednesday, I was excitedly adding a big load of pics to the wall, and telling the students around me about how we were almost at 100. Jonah, a friend from Rm. 112, commented on how he didn’t realize we had read that many books, and that he didn’t know how many pictures were actually up there. Incredulously I asked him, “Don’t you ever look at our display? How have you not seen all those books out there??” He looked at me very matter-of-factly and said, “Well I do, but I look at the WALL, not the PICTURES!” At first it seemed a little funny, but then I realized that, yes, indeed, the thing at eye-level for first graders is a big. blank. wall. I know I should look up there at all those pretty book covers, and kiddos do too–if I tell them to, but yep, most kids who look at our display probably just see a wall.

It really made me start thinking about who that display is for, and how I can make it more kid-friendly. While there are LOADS of ways that we interact with it on a daily and weekly basis, and I can point out how the space is filling up and how we’re close to 100, there is probably a better way to do it. Starting with putting the pictures at the BOTTOM of the wall instead of the top. That’s where kiddos are anyway, right? It would probably makes more sense to them that the wall is FILLING up anyway, if they could see it reach up to the top and ACTUALLY FILLING up, rather than coming down the wall.

I know it’s a small tweak, and obviously one I hadn’t thought of, but I was SO GLAD we had had that little conversation, because it got me thinking about how many other things I do that maybe I think are kid-centered, kid-led or kid-friendly, but that are instead geared toward me.

So I’m fixing the wall. I’m flipping it all upside-down and we will indeed watch the wall FILL UP as we go through this year. Can’t wait to share the changes with you next week!!

In the meantime, have you ever had a kiddo tell you something that flipped your thinking upside-down? I’d love to hear about it! 🙂

#WDYDAA: Phonemic Awareness Revisited

I started a series a couple of weeks ago to help families (and any other blog readers!) know what happens in Rm. 111 all day. We started by sharing Phonemic Awareness, for which we use Heggerty’s program.

Since my last post, we have done some really important work in regards to what our phonemic awareness time is supposed to look like and sound like. We have watched our videos and reflected on what we are seeing that are “pluses” and “deltas.” After we had recorded and reviewed three different sessions, I gave Rm. 111 friends a challenge to see if they could have a “perfect” session of our Heggerty lesson.

Take 1 and Take 2 of our Heggerty Reflections

As you can see, these two sessions don’t look that much different. I have to admit that part of the problem here was my fault–we recorded with my iPad in selfie mode, so many friends were super distracted by seeing themselves on the screen and could not focus on our learning. Oops. One super easy way we decided to fix it for our third take was to simply turn the iPad around. Sometimes it’s so simple it’s funny. 🙂

Before our next lesson, we reviewed what the expectations were for them as learners (we reviewed both our listening rules as well as both sides of our charts), and got ready to show how amazing we were. Additionally, a friend suggested that we invite Mrs. Wessel to come back to see us in action since we’d worked on our learning behaviors, since she had been there for our first session. It was a great idea, and thankfully she was free! It was also great that she could come, because she also served as our videographer again (which was much less distracting than my iPad on the table LOL).

So…I’m writing this post to show you what our Heggerty lessons look like now–to both highlight our learning but also how smart we are and how we have such growth mindsets! We were determined to get it right, to show what we know, to help everyone learn and to follow all of our listening rules (which are to have eyes watching, ears listening, voice quiet and a still body).

Listening rules (and our Zones of Regulation chart, which I will share about later!)

I’m really proud of my Rm. 111 learners and how they’ve grown! Celebrate this chart and this video with us, please. 🙂

Our third Heggerty reflection chart. Beckett asked to make this chart for us, and made the plus and delta that way because he knew that we’d have LOADS of good things and a small amount of deltas. LOVE IT!

We’d love to hear what you think! Kids LOVE when they know people see their smart work and want to give them a shout out for it! What questions do you have about our phonemic awareness lessons? I KNOW my friends would love to tell you about what we do everyday–and WHY we do it! 🙂

#FDOFG2018: Readers Gonna Read

We have been reading ALOT in first grade, and much of it has been reading aloud together. But not all of it. 🙂

We have also been working very hard to learn the habits of good readers, to read both independently and with our partners and also to choose the right books for us. I’ve been so proud with how quickly our Rm. 111 readers have gotten into a groove and begun to build their stamina.

We’ve learned some BAD HABITS to drop and some GOOD HABITS to pick up. Readers thought it was really funny when I acted out the bad habits during our lesson. Ask your reader to show you what those bad habits look and sound like, then to show you what we should do INSTEAD. 🙂

Each week we have a learning partner, with whom we turn-and-talk on the rug, and also partner read. We use these partners in other ways, too, through out the week as they are quick to find. Some of our work time during Readers’ Workshop is read-to-self and some if read-to-someone, so we sit right next to our partners so we can quickly move from one job to the next. Check out some pictures of us being our best reader selves, back-to-back in read-to-self and side-by-side doing read-to-someone. 🙂

Read-to-Self

Lots and lots of read-to-someone! We’ve learned that we need to read ONE book at a time, and also that we can do partner reading in 3 ways: popcorn reading, choral reading or I read, you read. We LOVE this time of day!

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week of September 17, 2018

We’re moving and grooving with books in first grade! While our wall is not filling up as quickly as last year, it’s still so great to watch the new books appear as our first grade classes read them and they are posted. :). I love to watch the faces and comments as kids walk by (kids from 1st grade and from the rest of the school!) and they make connections with the covers. Reminds me of the many reasons why this is such a great project!

Here’s our wall as of Friday, September 21–we’re up to 72!!

This week we added these books:

We had another great week of books–Dr. Seuss (because we’re working on rhyming!), Peter H. Reynolds (because he’s awesome and also because Dot Day was last week!), and many that are just plain fun!

What suggestions do you have for us to read this week? 🙂

#classroombookaday 2018 begins!

This year we began the 3rd iteration of the #classroombookaday challenge in 1st grade at Robinson! I am ready for this to be the BEST year ever of the challenge! Originally I would have said that it was because we’d read even more books than last year (our final number was 560!), but now I’d say there’s another reason. The first year I participated, my neighbor and friend Ms. Turken did it with me, but hung her own display and read different books than we did in our room. Last year, as we began our official co-teaching journey together, we combined our challenge and our display and read 560 of the same books together (some chosen by her, some chosen by me, some chosen by 1st graders). And since I was a lazy blogger last year and didn’t tell you all about that journey, let me post the pictures of our final wall now. :). It’s pretty great!

As a side note, we got to the end of the school year and were a little uncertain about what we should do with our display. I mean, come on, it was as much an art piece as it was a record of the great books we’d read! My very smart friend, Marcie, suggested that I take it all down and save the pictures to use again this year (which I admit is a VERY smart and practical thing to do but one I had never considered LOL). We didn’t have time to do this before we left for the summer so we did the next best thing: covered it up and crossed our fingers that it would be in tact and ready for us to take apart when we came back in August.

Thankfully it survived the unpredictability of summer cleaning and moving, and we were able to keep most of the books we had hung last year. I guess we even started the year ahead of the game!

So, now we get to this year. This year Ms. Turken and I are again collaborating to choose books for the wall, but we’ve also rallied the rest of our team to join in!! The more the merrier–more teachers and more first grade readers hearing so many great books! It has meant that our pace is a little slower than year’s past (since we have to have more classes read the book before it can be posted), but I’m convinced it’s totally worth it because we are including so many more kiddos in the joy of reading and watching the wall fill up!

As we finished day 17 of school (which is roughly 3 1/2 weeks), we have read and posted 42 books! Many of them are repeats from last year (because some books are TOO GOOD not to read again!), but since we’re including new teachers, we’ve read just as many new ones, too. Win, win, right??

I have to be honest that it feels a little bare, but I have hope because I know what it will quickly become!

And since you can’t see all those little books up there so far away, here’s what we’ve read:

I’m excited to share this journey with you this year. Be sure to stay tuned for what comes next!!

What Do You Do All Day Anyway? : Phonemic Awareness

At the beginning of every year, I have the unrealistic lofty goal of documenting everything that happens inside the walls of Rm. 111 ( and often Rm. 112), and then fail miserably, realizing that there is just not time to do that. There’s just TOO much that happens at the beginning of the school year that I want to tell you about! It’s all new and so it all seems important. :).

This time I am resigning my self to the fact that telling you something, even if it’s not everything is better than nothing! So, I’m going to be ok with not telling you about everything that has gone on in the last 16 days, and will roll on, focusing on what is happening now, and maybe finding time to add in some fun from our first days. 🙂

As we’ve been learning through these first few weeks, I’ve been thinking about how many things we seem to pack into one school day! It’s made me want to write a blog series ( that I’m starting with this post!) to highlight what we really do all day. I mean I can share the schedule, or your kiddo could tell you they had Reading Workshop, but unless you’re there, it’s really hard to fully understand what that looks like for a first grader.

That being said, I’m starting by showing something we do every day (usually right after lunch, at 11:45, just to be precise 🙂 ), where we work on listening to sounds and hearing parts of words and using those parts to make new words. Officially we use a program called Phonemic Awareness: The Skills That They Need to Help Them Succeed! By Michael Heggerty. On our schedule, it’s simply called Heggerty, or more often we refer to this time as “the yellow book,” because I usually hold the ginormous yellow book on my lap while we go through the lesson. :). Regardless of what we call it, at least everyone knows what to expect!

In short, phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken word is made up of individual sounds, called phonemes. During our lessons–which are done totally through the auditory mode (no words, text or visuals), we practice isolating sounds, manipulating sounds, blending and segmenting them, as well as deleting sounds to figure out what is left. We talk about letters, analyze rhymes and identify how many words are in a sentence. It’s focused, intentional and quick, and they’ve picked up on the routines of these lessons pretty quickly. There are movements that go along with most parts of our lesson, and kids especially love when we use our “choppers” to break apart words into syllables.

With the help of my instructional coach, Amy, we recorded a lesson to help you see what happens. We went back and forth about which angle to use to help you best see what’s going on (as you can hear the whole lesson either way), but eventually thought it would be best for you to see what the KIDS are doing during a lesson, rather than just what I am doing from my teacher chair. Who wants to see the teacher for 10 minutes when you can see the kids doing super smart work with words? 🙂

So, in answer to that question about what we do all day, one thing is we work on Phonemic Awareness, which will help us as both readers and writers. Here’s a peek into this word work time in our classroom!

In case you missed it, in just those 10 short minutes we increased language awareness, worked on rhyming, identified onsets (beginning sounds), blended syllables, identified final phonemes (ending sounds), segmented words, substituted phonemes, added phonemes, deleted phonemes and worked on letter names and sounds. Whew! Action packed for sure!

After we finished, Sam said, “Let’s watch our video!” Without knowing so, he was reading my mind, and that was my plan for our next steps anyway! I asked him why he thought we should, and he just said he wanted to know how it went (and what kid doesn’t like to see themselves on the big screen?!), but I also wanted to have a discussion about what went well and how we could improve for next time. I prepped them to choose to just focus on themselves, to focus on the whole class, or to even choose to watch what I did and think about what went well (which we call pluses), and what we might change for our next try (which we mark as deltas).

As we talked, we recorded our noticings, being sure to share names when we were highlighting pluses and making sure to just say “I saw someone…” when we were mentioning things we could change. When we were finished, our chart looked like this:

This reflective protocol is something that we do often, and it is very helpful in kids’ recognizing their role in making our classroom a safe, kind place to learn, and to make sure they are putting their best foot forward. I’m excited to see what happens when we review our chart before Heggerty on Monday and focus on changing some of those things we listed on the right side of the chart. Using this reflective protocol over the next weeks and months, in various situations is also an idea that is brewing with my teammates as a way to help grow kiddos’ capacity to reflect on their engagement and ultimately take responsibility for their learning. I’m so excited (and will be sure to share more as it comes!!)!

As you think about phonemic awareness in the first grade classroom, what do you wonder? What do you notice? If you’re a parent, ask your kiddo what they like most about doing Heggerty in our classroom. Ask them to tell you about how this helps them in other parts of our day. Ask them to tell you what they would change about learning about letters and sounds. If you’re a teacher, how to you address phonemic awareness in your classroom? How do you see it affecting your students are readers and writers? What is your go-to resource or what other things do you use to support kiddos in this learning?

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I’d love to hear from you! The conversation makes this whole thing even better! 🙂

What’s a Catch of the Day?

At Robinson, respect is a big deal, and so is being safe, kind and showing that you are a learner. And one way that we can highlight and encourage friends who do this repeatedly is with a Catch of the Day. They can be earned by a whole class (our class has 2 so far!) or by an individual kid. Any adult in our building can give them, and you can earn many in a single day.

I love the way a kid’s face lights up when you tell them you noticed them doing something super and how happy they are to show off their golden ticket! We have all gotten one so far, and many of us have earned more than that already–and we’ve only been in school for 8 days! Here’s to continued expected behaviors and more and more Catches of the Day for Rm. 111 friends! Celebrate with these friends! 🙂

1st Day of 1st Grade 2018!

The room is ~~mostly~~ put together. The pencils are sharpened (well because they came that way!). We’ve met each other and seen our new space. We are all finally here. It’s the 1st day of 1st grade and we’re ready for a great year!!

I want to take a few minutes in this first post to welcome you to my blog (if you’re new) and welcome you back (if you’ve been here before). I want to start our year (or maybe longer!) off with a little bit of rationale for how I hope this conversation will go, as well as for the purpose of this blog. I hope that it will help you as you navigate through our 1st grade journey to better understand why I write what I write here. 🙂 .

I could tell the long story about how I started and how this blog has changed over the last 7 years (and you know, that story is probably already posted here somewhere!), but instead I’ll just jump into the here-and-now and tell you that most of all I am here because I love teaching. I love kids and spending time with them everyday, hearing their thinking, getting to know their hearts, watching them discover new things. I am also here because I love to write. I have found that writing is a very powerful and important way for me to process and reflect upon what happens in our classroom, and helps me to improve my technique and then do better for the next time.

So, as you read posts here, you will notice a couple of things about what I write. First of all, I tend to go deep. Rather than tell you about a whole week’s worth of learning or activities in one post, I’ll dig down and just focus on ONE THING at a time. I like to tell the WHOLE story, usually with a backstory, and often with ideas for where I’ll go next. I like to include pictures and videos so you can see what happened and/or highlight some super smart thing a kid did or said. I will almost always tell you why we did what we did and explain my rationale behind it or my thinking about the purpose. Oh, and I will probably tell you about what DIDN’T work.

Aside from my own process and reflection, I want this blog to be an open-door peek into what happens in Rm. 111 every day, especially for those of you who send your babies to me each morning and wonder what happens all day. I want you to be able to imagine what it would be like to be a first grader at Robinson, and also to get a bigger picture of how and what your kiddos are learning. I hope to give you enough detail that you can ask your learner questions and get a conversation going around your dinner table–so that you hear more than just “it was good” when you ask about school. 🙂 Additionally, I hope that others who read this blog (who don’t have kiddos in Rm. 111) will get a picture of what is happening in our school, in our district, in our state, and maybe using that to inform what happens in your own classroom or learning space. I hope to be an inspiration to other educators, like so many have been to me over the years. How lucky we are that technology is such that we can reach into places so far away and connect with them so easily!

Lastly, I want to emphasize that I want this blog to be a place of CONVERSATION! If you have a question, please ask it! If you have a comment, please write it! If you see a cute picture of your kiddo and you want to say hi to them, wave away! If you have a suggestion for how we could do something better, please leave it! I know that the best years on 20somethingkids have been when parents, teachers, students and even strangers have been connected in conversations about learning–we all got smarter and were so much better for it! Ok, and of course, then, if I’m inviting you to connect with us, I’m also asking that you do it kindly. 🙂

So…that hopefully has gotten us off on a good foot and we are ready for a fabulous first grade year together. But wait–I haven’t shown you anything about this year’s bunch of super smart, super funny, super creative learners in Rm. 111 yet. So, here they are, ready to jump into this new journey. Look how proud they are. 🙂

Hi, Rm. 111 friends! (We are missing one friend in this picture–Will–and will post another version of this soon with ALL of our friends. SORRY!!)

Ok, and then another thing I’ve started doing every year is making sure to get a first day and last day pic to show how amazingly kiddos have grown in just one short year. They always come as babies and leave as such big kids!! Here’s our first day pics from August 15, 2018. 🙂 (And…just as I’m collecting them all I realize there was a different friend who was not here! I’ll add him when I can get back to my book wall tomorrow! My apologies–first graders don’t stay put for very long!! lol)

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Whew! Man…sometimes the first post is the hardest! We’re off and running and here we go into a busy, busy year! I already have like 17 blog posts I want to write–hopefully most of them will show up here. 🙂

And to get our conversation started: please leave your name and tell us from where you are reading our blog. We’ve had readers from as far away as Australia and China in the past and it’s a BLAST to see how far our words and pictures stretch. If you’re a family member of a Rm. 111 friend, leave a note and give them some advice for a great learning year. And no matter who you are, thanks for being here and taking time to peek into our first grade world! 🙂

Welcome to our First Grade Family! (2018-2019 edition)

Welcome to 1st Grade, Friends!

I am so excited you’re here!

The following letter contains 2636 words that will begin to shape your child’s first grade year (I know–it’s a little long. Sorry!). You will want to have your family sit and read this so you can all be excited about first grade together. You should also have dancing shoes on (you’ll learn why later!) and your phone (or other recording device) handy.

Ready? Of course you are! Because you are all about to become…

First Grade and Fabulous!

I am excited for the year ahead – how about you??

Let’s get started! First a little bit about me. 🙂 I am going into my 18th year of teaching and every one of them has been at Robinson! I even did my student-teaching here long ago, so Robinson is definitely my home-away-from-home. In my real home I have a fabulous family that I love dearly. My husband, Grant, is a teacher, too, in Mehlville. He has taught 3rd, 4th and 5th grade. We have a 11YO son, Riley, who is in starting MIDDLE SCHOOL, y’all! (Not sure how this happened but we’re excited for a new chapter. 🙂 ) We also have a daughter named Allison–we call her Allie–who is 7 1/2. She goes to Robinson and you might even know her (if not, I’m sure you’ll meet her soon). We LOVE (yep, love) Disney World, and travel there often. Chicago is another one of our favorite places to travel to together. We also just like to hang out together at home (or anywhere, really) and spend time with each other. So that’s me. What about you? Can’t wait to learn more about YOUR family!

Like I said, this is my 18th year as a teacher, and every year, I begin the school year as a different person. I decide on that first day and then every day thereafter, who I am as a teacher. What is important to me. What I want to accomplish. What I want my students to see when they come to school. I choose that. I don’t let other people tell me who I will be and I don’t just be who I think other people want me to be. I read, I think, I write and then I decide.

Today is your day! Choose how you will use it. 🙂

Parents, I am excited to find out who YOUR CHILD will be!

Another wondering: What is important to you? What is important to your child?

There are lots of things that are important to me: my husband and my kids, sharing ideas, reading, writing, being able to have a conversation, making things, discovering things, sharing what I know, staying healthy and active, sleeping in, staying up late and knowing when to say sorry (and when to say nothing at all!).

As a teacher, there are a few more things that are important to me:

* YOU and YOUR CHILD!: They’re the reason I’m there, after all right? It is important for me to get to know your child (and your family!), and know them well. Not just as a learner, but as a kid, too. I want to know what they like, what they don’t like, what makes them tick. Who they are. That’s ok, right? 🙂

* Respect: At Robinson, it’s pretty much what we’re all about. I expect respect to be a huge thing in our classroom. I will respect your child, and I expect them to respect me, as well as everyone else in our community. This counts when we agree and even when we don’t. I have a saying that I learned from my good friend Mrs. Ford years ago, that is really important with this whole respect thing. It’s this: You are not the sun. In other words, the world does not revolve around you, and there are lots of other people in our classroom that have needs, wants, likes, dislikes, etc., that we need to take into account. I love your child, but I love everyone else, too! Additionally, it is SUPER important to me that we learn to love each other as people, learn to support each other, learn to cheer when our friends do well (and know that that doesn’t mean anything negative about us), learn to encourage each other when they need it, learn to understand and appreciate how we’re different as much as how we’re the same, and learn to learn together. We are in this together and none of us will be as successful alone as we can alongside each other. That’s a life lesson, not just a 1st grade lesson. 🙂

Maybe you saw our #classroombookaday wall in the mail hallway. We made it to 560 books last year! Here’s to another great year of reading in first grade!

*Reading: I know–you’re thinking, “well isn’t every subject important?” And yes, to a point, that’s true. But in my opinion, one of the single most indicators of success in life (and let’s face it, enjoyment as well!) is developing a love of reading. I ask that you join me in the task of helping your child LOVE reading. I am sure they’re probably already on their way, but let’s keep it up together! Read to them as well as with them. Share your own reading with them. Read in front of them. Show them the importance of words and how you can lose yourself in the right text. HAVE FUN and help them do the same! I hope that I will do my part to encourage all of these things as well! (In case you want to see more about how important this is, read about our #classroombookaday challenge from a previous year here).

*Writing: Words are important. They help us to communicate and tell our stories. When you write those words, you can deepen thinking and learning, as well as better process things you heard or are still thinking about (I know this is one of the most important reasons I write!). We will write, write, write in Rm. 111, just like we will read, read, read! (And no, don’t worry about correct spelling or perfect handwriting–everyone is allowed to make mistakes, the message is the most important part!)

* Mistakes: I expect your child to make them. 🙂 I want them (and you!) to learn to work through it when it’s hard and figure out what to do. I want them to feel the joy and success of learning something new because they persevered! Not everything will be easy here. And that’s ok. We’re in it together and I’ll help you all along the way. 🙂 THIS IS A PLACE WHERE WE WILL BE GRITTY!

* Collaboration: I love to share ideas and get ideas and try new things and even when those things fail, I know I am just one step closer to finding what does work. I love to work with other teachers to figure things out and find new solutions to old problems. But just as much as working with adults, I love to collaborate with students. I love to hear what they’re thinking, how they’re feeling about things, what they think would be the best way to learn something. It’s OUR classroom, and often your kiddos’ ideas are WAY better than mine. I know I’ll share lots of examples with your child (and you!) about how that’s happened to me over the years.

Aside from collaborating with me, though, they’ll be collaborating with each other! Your child will have lots of opportunities to share with their classmates, to give ideas, ask questions, prove reasoning and challenge each other. I expect that we will work together to help EVERYONE in our class be the best they can be. Together we’ll achieve much more than we would if we tried to do it on our own. 🙂 Reminds me of a sign I saw in Disney World at the Animal Kingdom:

I like to say that in our room, everyone is a teacher and a learner.

And as a new level of collaboration and learning, we will be combining with and I will be co-teaching with Ms. Turken for many things this year. Be ready to hear your kiddo talk about a whole other class of kiddos, and their “other” teacher, Ms. Turken. We had such an amazing year last go-round and are excited for another! Can’t wait to share more as we go forward!!

* Curiosity: There is no better way to learn something than to ask a question. It is DEFINITELY how I learn, and so please understand if you find me asking you (or your child) lots of questions as a means of figuring out how best to meet their needs or to connect with your family. In turn, I hope you will feel comfortable to ask me any questions you may have, and the perhaps most importantly, your child will feel comfortable to ask me–and their classmates–questions when they need to. Knowing when to ask for help is an important part of learning. 🙂 Also, WONDER is a natural part of being a kid, as well as a super important part of learning something new. WONDER is something that I will always encourage, and hopefully many things we learn together will start as someone’s wondering about the world.

* Technology : I love technology because it allows me to connect to new ideas. I like to think about what I want to do and look for tools to help me do it. I want to hear your ideas on technology and what works for you–and I ask that you be open to trying new things (that goes for BOTH you and your learner). We will be using technology in many new and exciting ways this year, so get ready! You child may be blogging, using Twitter, Schoology, Seesaw (which is an AMAZING app that allows endless ways for your child to share their learning with me, their peers AND YOU!) and other sites (like Skype to connect with other learners around the world), using iPads, making videos of learning and trying out many new things that we may not even know about yet. Whatever we do, though, the goal is always learning. We will use technology in meaningful ways to better create new knowledge. Excited? I know I am! PLEASE let me know what–if any–apprehensions you have in this area, either for you or your student. This will be an important area for us to explore together. 🙂

* Community: Our class, our families, our school, our neighborhood, our city, our state, our country, our world. There are so many amazing people doing amazing things. I am hoping to integrate your family stories into our classroom this year, taking full advantage of all of the amazing things each one of us has to offer. That might mean I ask you (grown-ups) to come read to us, teach us something, help us make something, send in things, etc. We want EVERYONE to be a part of the Rm. 111 family!! One of our first units this year will be learning about our names and families so stay tuned!

* Taking risks: I like to take risks. I hope you do too. It is scary sometimes and it fails sometimes but sometimes, more often, it is just A-MAZ-ING! Usually when you do something scary you do things you never thought you could. You surprise yourself. And then you want to do more! Someone smart once said “Fear and Excitement are shades of the same color”. Cool, huh? (Parents, this is true for you as much as it is for your kiddo!! 🙂

HANG IN THERE….You’re almost done!

OK…if you made it this far and are still with me, congratulations, you (and your kiddo) are a rock star. Stop reading right now and do some kind of victory dance. No really, go ahead. Dance. I’ll wait. Better yet, have someone video tape your dance and send it to me! I’ll even post it on our blog! (Did you see the posts where I did that with my last class? They didn’t believe that I’d do it, either. 🙂 )

So….what now? How can you best prepare for the extreme awesomeness of first grade?

Have a great summer! Be extraordinary.
Read something. Write something. Wonder something. This will get your learning muscles warmed up. 🙂
If you have any questions you can always email me. Anytime. No question to big or too small.
Think about what I said about who you want your child to be. Most importantly, remember that everyone else in our class is thinking about that too. Be gracious to those who are brave enough to set lofty goals and make the effort to become an even better version of themselves.
Talk with your family about how you would define HOME. I really want to make our classroom a comfortable, warm place were our school family can feel safe to get down and dirty, taking chances and making mistakes and LEARNING TONS! I want this to include pieces of each of our homes. I will send a survey to you later, where you can give share your ideas, but I wanted to get your thinking about it now. 🙂
THIS ONE IS FOR THE KIDDOS!: Look around your house (or your computer, maybe) for a picture of your family. I’d love to be able to decorate our room with us–pictures of all the people who help make us who we are and who encourage us to do our best. I want to be able to fill our room with love, support and smiling faces, so please bring a 3×5, 4×6 or 5X7 picture (framed if possible–but don’t stress over this part!) with you to Open House or on the first day of school. And if you don’t have one, don’t worry! We’ll take your picture!

Despite having now used more than two thousand words, there are no words to describe how excited I am about working with you next year!

Here’s To Being First Grade and Fabulous!

♥ Mrs. Bearden

PS. If you didn’t get up and dance before and are now wishing you did, there is still time to do it. Anytime. Send me that video with your best moves (we’ll check these out together once we’re all in school together. Fun, right?).

When you have had a chance to relax, digest this letter (maybe talk about it with your family or friends) and get your first grade brain tuned up, I would love for your child to write to me to introduce yourself, ask questions, maybe respond to something you read in this letter that made you think. An email, postcard or a good ‘ole letter via snail mail is great! Don’t worry–there’s still loads of time before school starts! You can send your letter to Robinson, c/o of Mrs. Bearden at 803 S. Couch Ave., Kirkwood, MO 63122.

I look forward meeting you!

Mrs. Bearden: Email–jennifer.bearden@kirkwoodschools.org; Phone–314-213-6100 x4211 (after August 9)

Twitter: @jbeardensclass (This is our class feed, and we will tweet here together with my supervision and instruction. It’s a great way to stay on top of what’s going on in our classroom since you don’t get to be there every day! Follow us!)

Blog: http://www.20somethingkidsand1kookyteacher.com Feel free to leave me a comment here to let me know what you thought, what you wonder, how your summer has been, etc….this is always a great place to talk to me! 🙂 Also–if you have a minute while you’re here, go ahead and subscribe to the blog feed. That way you’ll never miss anything that happens here. I add things often and you’ll want to read it all!! Just click on the button on the right side of the page and add your email address. 🙂

**Thanks to @terSonya for help with writing this post! Like I said, I love to share ideas!**

20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher

Starting a 3rd Grade Journey