Tag Archives: friends

Some Words on PLAY

Hey–come closer. A little closer. I have to tell you something. Ready? I teach 3rd graders and we have choice time in our class. Yep. Maybe every day. And they love it.

I know that to some (many?) people that is a controversial statement. To some (many?) 3rd grade marks a change in school. This is the year when kids are supposed to get serious. They’re supposed to have moved on past the play time and ease of primary grades and be ready now for real school, where they should be expected to sit still and work silently (often in a desk), have lots of homework and get ready for middle school (oh man, don’t even get me started about that statement….maybe more on that later…). Gone are the days of games and free time and arts and crafts. Now is the time for work.

While I am by no means an expert on third grade or third graders, I have spent a lot of time in a classroom and have taught grades on both sides of it, so I know some of how parents and teachers alike expect third grade to go. I’m going to suggest there’s another way to do it. A way that values both play and learning, as play IS a way children learn.

If you Google “quotes on play” you can sit for hours and go through all sorts of things that people say about play. Here are just a few:

As an early childhood educator, I was taught–and firmly believe–that children are the crafters of their learning and my job is one of a facilitator. I provide the opportunities and invitations, and kiddos do the thinking and discovering as they figure things out and own their knowledge. Yes, there are times when you have to give them information, but more often than not, leading them there and having them find out things for themselves is the best way. The more they do for themselves, the more they remember and the more ownership they take. Also, it’s way more fun to figure things out than to always have the adults around you be the experts telling you all the things.

Why do I even mention this? Because like I mentioned before, people find choice time–or art, LEGOs, games, building, recess–to be a no-no for older kiddos. I need you to know that this is an expectation in my classroom, and we will work hard through play, choice and fun.

Especially at the beginning of the year, unstructured time with new people in a new classroom is crucial–both for students and for me. As I give them time to make choices of what to do and who to work (play) with, I am learning as much as them. I can get info on who they work well with (and who they don’t!); what they do when they are frustrated; what makes them happy; what they enjoy doing; how long they can stay engaged with an activity; what they know about problem-solving, creativity and figuring out what to do on their own; how well they clean up after themselves (or don’t LOL); more about their language skills; and countless other things. They can learn about their friends, meet new ones, relieve stress, create things, learn a new game or skill, become comfortable in our classroom and of course, it’s FUN! I honestly do not know what I would do in my classroom if there was not time or room for kids to play. It’s good for all parts of them, and it’s good for me, too. Some of the best conversations I have had with kids have come during unstructured time in our room when they don’t feel pressure to be “on” or like I’m expecting something from them. They are at ease and are often more likely to share things that then help me in future interactions with them as learners.

I look forward to the ways we will play and learn together, and how I can encourage kiddos to do new and hard things by presenting the challenges to them in a fun, welcoming way. Sharing my own stories of play are important, too. I’m sure we will make mistakes, get messy and learn a TON together. Hope you are along for the ride!

Tell us, what is your favorite way to play? Leave a comment and we’ll be sure to respond soon! 🙂

More Third Grade Highlights 2022!

If you haven’t had a chance to read part 1 of these highlights, be sure to do that first! Don’t want to miss anything. 🙂

What to Do With a Box

We read a great book called What to Do with a Box by Jane Yolen. It’s about a kiddo who does amazing things with a box and their imagination. After the book, kiddos saw this on our carpet:

As they thought about which box they wanted to use, they were matching it up with what they thought their box could become. There were not at many parameters for this one–“Make something new out of your box,” were the only directions. They could add anything we had in our classroom to the project. Oh, except paint because we haven’t gotten that out yet. LOL. They could choose to work alone or with a partner, putting their boxes together to create something bigger (and probably better!).

Once we finished, kiddos created an “exhibit” to tell about their creation. They wrote 3 sentences to tell about what it was and how they made it. We set them all up around the room in a mini-museum and then did a gallery walk (after we talk about what they meant and how to follow museum etiquette, of course! 🙂 ).

Don’t you just love the buzz in the room??? I am a giant fan of that sound! 🙂

Oh, and by the way–kids LOVED this! It was definitely one of the highlights of the day, and probably the week. Which was kind of the point, really. I always have a goal during these first few days (and always, really!) of helping kids see that learning is fun, that our classroom is a safe place to make and share your ideas, to create things, to make mistakes (and messes!) and a place to explore new things by yourself and with your friends. I want to set the stage for the year from day 1!

“My Favorites” Game

Kiddos played a game with their crews where they answered questions about their favorite things. This was one fun and can be played over and over again with different groups. Oh, and this one was a good place to teach kiddos how to roll dice in my room. Yep, you heard it right. I HATE the sound of clicking dice on floors and tables, and also hate when learning time is spent running after roll-away dice, so I have a lesson the first time we get the dice box out. I know you’re wondering what that lesson looked like. hee hee If you have a student in this class, be sure to have them teach it to you, and if you don’t leave a comment and I’ll add a video to show you. ;). Anyhow, they really enjoyed this way of learning about their friends.

Puzzles!

I love a puzzle! I have loved doing jigsaw puzzles all my life, and even today usually do one daily, on an app on my iPad. Every year on Global School Play day, our class puts together a 500+ piece puzzle together over the day. So as we begin the year together, I had to introduce puzzles to the class. Besides being fun, there are sooo many other skills that doing puzzles supports. Kiddos practice problem-solving, perseverance, stamina for hard things, focus, communication, play and free choice options, cooperation, and also just time to be with friends and/or make new ones. And guess what? They loved this, too. 🙂 Check out these amazing puzzle-solvers!

Library Tours–our classroom and Robinson’s!

We spent some time getting to know our classroom library, as well as the Robinson library–the latter with a scavenger hunt. So fun! I usually do this during the first days anyway, but we definitely had to do it sooner. They were dying to go book shopping and of course I had to oblige!

Mini-Me’s

We needed some mini versions of ourselves so we made some! This activity came after the book Happy in Our Skin, and we had fun creating a beautiful classroom line of US! We’ll use these as decoration as well as a way to keep track of who’s in charge (which is what we call helpers in our class!).

Ok, that’s all for now. But like I said before, keep coming back, because there will be A LOT to show you as we go through this year! I already have a list of things that aren’t on this list of “first week” things. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next post! Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave us a comment to let us know what you think about what’s going on in Rm. 204!

Weather Wonder Day!

It’s been so fun being back on the blog. I still can’t believe I took such a long hiatus. Oh well, here’s to getting a good roll going!

Remember how a couple of weeks ago we had a super busy, fun week with Global School Play Day and World Read Aloud Day?? Well that day of being together as a whole grade level was so much fun and energizing that we decided to do it again—every Friday!

So that meant that this past Friday we gathered again (on Zoom, of course!) to have a fun-filled 2nd grade learning day. Our topic was WEATHER WONDER and each teacher again took a small chunk of the day and shared something new. Check out what we did!

We started our weather-filled wondering day with Mrs. Stephens, learning about clouds! She read us a book, showed us some pictures and we discovered that there were some very complicated names for all of those puffy shapes. Cirrus, cumulus, stratus, nimbus, plus all the ways you can put those words together!

Then she gave us a job to do.

This was so much fun! We had sent kids home with a bag prepared with the materials they would need, and kiddos got to quick work showing what they had learned about clouds. Check out the amazing creations that materialized!

After clouds, we did some movement (thank you, GoNoodle!) and then moved on to the next logical topic–rain! Mrs. Nguyen showed us a video that used some great science words like evaporation, condensation and precipitation. Then we read a book that Mrs. Davis (our librarian) told us about last week that is a contender for March Madness. It’s about rain and it’s so great–Soaked! by Abi Cushman.

After this story, Mrs. Nguyen had a great conversation starter: Would you rather play outside in the rain or play outside in the snow? We had a great time chatting about this in breakout rooms with our friends! And in case you’re wondering, my answer is neither. HA!! Just kidding. I think I would have to say rain, but with some very specific parameters. I would rather play outside in the rain IF it was summer and the rain was warm. AND it was in Disney World where I’ve been caught in many a rainstorm but didn’t mind because I was in the Happiest Place on Earth. No thanks on the snow. :). I’ll enjoy that through the window with a warm cup of coffee in my hand and blanket on my lap.

After clouds and rain came TORNADOES and HURRICANES!! I found a great video from Mystery Science asking kiddos to consider which is worse? The video even included a 2nd grader who asked Mystery Doug the question, which was very cool!

Of course after we learned about these powerful storms and learned some more about what makes them unique, kiddos had a job to share THEIR opinion about which storm is worse.

After the stress of massive storms, we needed some yoga, so Ms. Dale found some on YouTube for us and we followed along and stretched out our bodies.

Ok…so far: clouds, rain, tornadoes and hurricanes. Up next, SNOW!!

Mrs. Dale found a super interesting video about snowflakes that taught us all about how they start with a seed crystal, how they are made of hexagons, and how there are many different kinds that form (based on how warm or cold the air is). We learned (or were reminded?) that snowflakes have 6 arms. She led us in some drawing and taught us a funny story about a Zoid to remember that a trapezoid makes a hexagon ( if you have a second grader who was there for that story, have them tell you about it!!)

Whew! What a busy and learning-filled morning!! After that we needed lunch and recess, which was a welcomed break. We came back after lunch to regroup and reflect on our new knowledge.

Mrs. Kier began by reminding us of what we’d talked about–and man was it a lot!!

And then came probably the BEST PART of the day (in the minds of our 2nd graders at least)–kiddos were invited to share their learning using SCRATCH JR.!

We ended our day with a conversation about what other topics kiddos would like to have on our themed Fridays and not surprisingly they had a TON! I think dinosaurs is leading the pack right now, but the list was long and will last us the rest of the year. I can’t wait to see what happens next!?

Have you ever done a themed day of online learning with your class? With your grade level? What topics would you be interested in learning more about? We’d love to hear from you!!

World Read Aloud Day 2021: COVID Edition

YAY!! It’s the beginning of February, which means that it is time for Global School Play Day and World Read Aloud Day! It’s not a celebration that I’m new to, but it is definitely never something I’ve celebrated in cyberspace. :). Because it’s still COVID times, our WRAD observation was planned to take place on a Friday, were we were online. We figured this was the best way to collaborate as a grade level, since at school we’re only allowed to be with our individual cohorts.

So we sat down as a team before the day, finding times for all of our 2nd grade teachers, plus Mrs. Scanlon–our fabulous reading teacher–and Dr. OH–our fabulous principal–to read to our kiddos. Like a normal virtual day, we also tried to make sure we added in movement breaks and times for kids to interact and talk to each other. Our plan looked like this:

As we went into the day, we were SO EXCITED to be able to get all of our second grade friends and all of our team in the same room (even if it was a ZOOM room!) so we could celebrate books together! We could hardly wait for the morning!

We began the day in our own Zoom Room, with Mrs. Nguyen and me and all of our Rm. 111 friends. We talked about our Zone colors and talked about our day, getting excited for what was to come. After our morning Meeting, we all went to Mrs. Stephens’ Zoom room since she was going to host the morning festivities.

Our first reader was Mrs. Scanlon, who shared one of her favorite books with us:

Somehow in all my years of both reading kids’ books and teaching kids to read, I’ve never read this book! It was so great and the kids loved it!

After this, we moved the whole group into breakout rooms to chat about the story. I was in a room with 3 super great girls who had lots to say! We even had time to start reading to each other! Such a fun time. 🙂

Next up–Dr. OH! This was our first opportunity to have our principal read to us this year, but it’s definitely not the first time we’ve had our fearless leader read to our grade level. Remember when Mrs. Sisul used to come read to us all the time??

Dr. OH shared a great story about a strong girl with us: I Will Be Fierce!

After a quick GoNoodle to give our bodies a minute to move, we got to hear a super funny story from my student teacher, Mrs. Nguyen. My class gets the chance to listen to her read all the time, so I was glad she got to share her stories with the whole grade level for this special day!!

She shared the story Potato Pants with us. 🙂

Mrs. Kier was up next, and she shared an oldie-but-goodie from Epic–The Bad Seed.

After that many super read alouds, we were ready to use our brains in another way. Mrs. Stephens shared a fun activity with us, that started in the main room and then we did in small group breakout rooms. We did a Spot the Difference game she had found on YouTube. There are two pictures and we had to –you guessed it!–find the differences between the two pictures. What fun! This activity was definitely a hit and one we’ll do again when we have a chance!

After a break for lunch and some rest or play time on their own, we came back together, this time in our Zoom room! It was my turn and then Mrs. Dale shared a story, too.

I had a big pile of things that I would have loved to share, but since I only had one, I picked a book that was from a beloved author (Peter H. Reynolds) and that connected with some of our themes in SEL lately.

After the story, kiddos took turns responding to the invitation to “say something. It was fun to hear all of the different things they thought of sharing with their friends!

Mrs. Dale found a great story on Epic, too, one that none of us had heard of before: Nico Draws a Feeling. After we finished the story, she invited kiddos to grab some crayons and a piece of paper and try out what Nico had done. The challenge was to draw the FEELINGS related to an event or episode, rather than the event itself. This was hard work! What a great opportunity, though, to express ourselves in a new and exciting way!

We ended our day with choice time, closing meeting in our homerooms and then our specials class. What an AMAZING day of books and fun and FRIENDS!! It was definitely different than any other World Read Aloud Day I’ve experienced, but isn’t that just how this school year is going?? It will be a memorable one for sure!!

How did you spend World Read Aloud Day 2021? Leave us a comment and tell us about it!

Pancake Day!

Every morning when we start our day, we make a rectangle (because our carpet doesn’t really allow us to make a circle–LOL), and talk about how we’re feeling.  We talk about the zone of regulation we’re in (usually we’re green and blue!), and often there is a question that we all answer.  Very early on, I used a question I stole from my 7th grader (thanks, Riley!)–what is your favorite breakfast food?

Not surprisingly, many kiddos around the circle mentioned pancakes.  And very specifically, Luke said chocolate chip pancakes. :). It seemed like for the next few days, everything we read and everywhere we looked, we were seeing references of pancakes.  This includes our cafeteria, where the “B” choice every Wednesday is pancakes for lunch. :). So….we decided that it would only make sense to have our very own pancake party!

The date was set, and as we awaited the day, we found as many pancake-inspired books to read to get us ready (and make us hungry!!).  Check out what we found!

Then, on Friday, we were ready for our special pancake breakfast together! :). And I’d say, it was even better than we’ve even hoped!

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Luke, with his chocolate chip pancakes.  Thanks for the idea, buddy!  YUM!!

This made our third snack-related day already (we’ve been together for 22 days), and we’re already planning our next!  There really is something to be said about how special it is to share a meal together (stay tuned to see what it will be!). I have heard from many first graders that this was our best day yet! :).

#FDOFG2017: Marshmallow Challenge 2017

I learned about the Marshmallow Challenge about 5 years ago and I’ve been doing it with classes ever since!  It’s always fun to see what a new class with do with the challenge–how they tackle it, how tall their towers are, what strategies they use to work as a team, etc.  Like with most years, we did it twice, with a debrief in the middle to help us think about what worked and what we could change.

Take 1:

We had an ok start, and kids took pretty quickly to what they were supposed to do.  Teams (which I chose ahead of time and are groups we will use periodically all year) worked well and learned to negotiate who did what/when/how, etc.  After our first round–where all of the towers fell over–we talked together on the carpet:

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The black words are from our first conversation; the green arrows denote the things we changed that made our second went much better.  So yeah–spoiler alert!–we tried again and this time teams were much more successful.  Successful, we thought, meant that our towers stood up and everyone participated and helped the activity work.

Check out our 2nd go-round:

Our final towers were pretty impressive and our teams were pretty proud!

Great job, Rm. 111 friends!  🙂

It Begins Again! First Day of First Grade 2017-18

Wow!  After waiting the whole summer–moving my classroom, moving my HOUSE, going on a fabulous vacation with my family and then figuring out how to set up a new classroom, it was FINALLY time to get started again.

Before I share the first day of first grade in Rm. 111, indulge me with a couple of first day pictures of my own kiddos, won’t you?

 

Somehow I am now the parent of a 5TH GRADER (Riley) and a 1ST GRADER (Allie)–how did this happen??  Oh yeah, kids grow up. 🙂  Anyhow, both were super excited to get their day started (as was I!) and we snapped an on-the-way-to-school selfie (don’t worry–I wasn’t driving yet!).

So it’s funny as I go back through my photos to see what to post here and what stories to tell.  I can tell it was a really busy day because I didn’t have time to take that many pictures!  I CAN tell you that we were able to read lots of stories together (which you will hear LOTS about this year!), work on learning names and beginning to build our community, work on something fun with our 1st grade neighbors in Ms. Turken’s class, had some quiet time and of course learned a little about how things work in first grade at Robinson and in Rm. 111.  We had some fun, made some memories and shared some laughs.  Hopefully they came home with lots of stories to tell and were exhausted from the day!  Ok, well at least my first grader was. 🙂

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Happy First Day of First Grade, from Rm. 111 kiddos!

We also took some pics of each kiddo, which are super cute and will be great to look back at throughout the year and compare our “last day” selves to!  Check them out!

We ended the day together with our next-door-neighbors and created first day crowns with pictures to help kiddos tell families about their amazing day at school.  Hopefully if you’re a Rm. 111 family your kiddo shared it with you!  If not, be sure to ask them about it now!  You will notice kiddos from both classes in our pictures, and even Ms. Turken makes an appearance!

Makenna glues her first day pictures to share on her crown.
Check out Sutton’s crown!
Ms. Turken helps Alice tape her creation together.
Mackinsie, Addison, and Thomas work together.
Cheese!
Smile, Addy!
Campbell looks excited about his crown, too, doesn’t he?
When we were finished we got to read with our new friends!
Check out this gathering in our library. Love all the first grade fun!

I know this post is short, and doesn’t include many specifics and I PROMISE that there are more goodies to come!  We had two more FULL days after this one to share, as well as an EXCITING ECLIPSE DAY tomorrow to tell you about!  If you haven’t subscribed yet, be sure to do that while you’re here so you don’t miss out on the fun!  See you soon!! 🙂

 

#weekofkindness–Thursday

Oh my goodness guys—this week has been BEYOND amazing!  All week we’ve been collecting books to donate to friends who don’t have any as well as food for Feed My People and our own Robinson Cares Food Pantry.  It’s been so great to see how kind and generous kids and families are, and has been great as we’ve been able to use this meaningful topic as we work on our reading, writing and spelling with our chart:

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Our conversations all week have included ideas for how we can all show more kindness to each other, and today we added that last idea of making #weekofkindness cards for special Robinson people to show them we care.  We started the day with an easel question related to this topic:

img_6805We had loads of great suggestions (including several post-its with MY name on them, LOL), and came up with even more and we planned for our card-making.  Kiddos decided who they wanted to create for and then most paired up to share some love!

The smiles on their faces as they finished and then the excitement as they came back with stories of the joy they spread to the recipients was over-the-top.  This was definitely a GREAT addition to our #weekofkindness activities. 🙂  Spreading kindness makes you all warm inside too!

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I am SO glad we did this and wonder if #weekofkindness should happen once each MONTH instead of just once each year. 🙂

 

Do You Really Want a Turtle?

By the second day of school, my new Rm. 202 friends were already asking me about why we didn’t have a class pet.  What??  Were they serious?  They had found out about Mrs. L’s turtle, Javy (because of a sibling we have in 4th grade), and many had seen Ms. Turken’s water turtle, Bradford, who lives next door to us in Rm. 203.  And so already my friends were turtle-crazy.

The problem?  It was the second day of school, I didn’t have a turtle, nor did I really know anything about them (or had we decided yet as a class if we needed one or could take care of it!).  So Ms. Turken and I devised a little plan: her class was going to learn about turtles anyway, because of Bradford and their interest in them, and they could teach us about what we might need to know about what would be the best kind of turtle to have as a pet (I had noticed that Mrs. L’s turtle–who is actually a “cousin” to Bradford–is a box turtle, as opposed to Bradford, who is a water turtle): box or water.

Well, they worked and researched and wondered and wrote and last Friday they were ready to share their information with us.  They came over after lunch on our half day to present their research.  We were SUPER impressed with how organized and professional they were with their words and how well they used the microphone, stood so we could see them, and were so quiet and listening when it wasn’t their turn.  Again a group of first graders was knocking my socks off!

Like I said, Rm. 203 friends were SUPER turtle researchers and taught us a lot.  And yes, now our turtle craze is even greater than before.  We even found this book to read together to teach us more:

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And luckily, I now also have a connection to a turtle.  Updates to follow on whether or not a turtle joins the Rm. 202 family to come….:)

 

#FDOFG–First Grade Friends

It’s the first days of first grade, and like in any grade (or any place where there are new groups of people who don’t know each other well yet), there have to be lessons on how to be a good friend.  We did this with a book (or two…or three), and then we charted what we noticed.   We then spent the rest of the day purposefully doing things WITh our friends, then noticing which of those “good friend” things we were doing.

We started with the book Scaredy Squirrel Makes a Friend, because our friends in Rm. 203 came and shared it with us.  Yes–their WHOLE CLASS came over and shared the book with us because they thought we’d like reading it. (Which, by the way, is another message Ms. Turken and I had discussed wanting to sent to our classes: Readers share books they like with their friends!  So, ok, we had coordinated this beforehand, but then we did the same and shared our Box book with them when we were finished with it. 🙂 ).

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We also read an Elephant and Piggie book (don’t you love those??) called My New Friend is So Fun! and talked about what we know about how good friends treat each other.

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We made our chart…

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…and Jamie had a super idea that we keep going back to the list to check ourselves throughout the day.  Then Kaiden suggested that we make a note because I mentioned that I might forget.  See his post-it up there!?  What great 1st grade thinking already!!

Our next chance to practice our “good friend moves” came next when we went outside for recess.  We talked before we left about goals we had to do the things on the chart, and then we got busy having fun and being friendly!

We read a couple of more books…

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Our friend, Rachel, shared this one because she enjoyed reading it with her mom at home, and she thought we’d enjoy it, too.  We sure did!

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Kaiden thought this would be a good one and he was right!!  

…and talked about examples of “good friend moves” we found in the books.  We learned a lot from Louise, Peanut Butter and Jelly (yep, she’s in that book at the end–sorry, spoiler alert!).

After Day 2 (when this work started), we continued to come back to our work over and over.  We did things with our Room Crews (which I’ll show you in another post), and focused on things we had in common.   Each group made a web of things that everyone in their group had that was the same.  We practiced using kind words, asking good questions and working together.  Taking turns was important, and so was using quiet learning voices so everyone could concentrate.  Wow–who knew that being a friend was such hard work?!

After we shared in our small groups, we connected with the whole class and we figured out that a lot of us had things that were in common.  The next step was to do the same procedure, but with things that the whole group DIDN’T like.  They thought that was a fun twist, and they did a great job.

Obviously this is the first but not the only time we’ll talk about being friends.  I have been so impressed, though, with how kids have stepped up and are demonstrating the behaviors on our chart.  I know we’ll only continue to add to the tally marks and the “moves” as we go forward.  I can’t wait to share our progress.  Here’s to being great first grade friends!