Building a Foundation
8/31/2019
We've had a great start to our year in second grade in the last 8 days. Students were excited and ready to be back and to explore our new classroom. Here are some quick glimpses of some of what we did as we started to settle into a positive learning community. PNA utilizes Responsive Classroom as our Social Emotional Learning curriculum. While there are many pieces to Responsive Classroom, one of the most important is that of our daily Morning Meeting. Consisting of a greet, game/activity, share and news & announcements, this ritual is paramount to starting our day off right. Below is one of the games we played during morning meeting this week. Another important part of Responsive Classroom is the collaborative creation of our class rules and guidelines. After discussing what the teacher's and student's jobs are in the classroom, the second graders independently brainstormed some rules and guidelines that were important to them. The next step was to sort their ideas into categories. From there, the students decided that some of the guidelines could be combined into one and others needed to remain by themselves. Once everyone was happy with the guidelines, they began to create posters for each one to hang up in our classroom. Students worked across the curriculum areas learning procedures and expectations for materials. They also worked on activities such as the Beetle Glyphs in math class and the Important Poems in Language Arts to tell their classmates a little more about themselves. The balance ball team building challenge offered students the opportunity to practice their communication and problem solving skills. While the first attempt was a success, the second attempt (with a larger ball) wasn't quite as easy. After a bit of frustration, the class agreed that they were going to think about it for a bit and try again next week. All in all, it was a very productive first days together as students learned more about each other, worked together to solve challenges and began to form the foundation for a supportive, creative and safe learning 2nd grade community.
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Marcella HitchcockMs. Hitchcock teaches second grade, is a mom of two, an avid reader, lifelong learner, and a seeker of sunshine! Archives
March 2021
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