Building Our Classroom Community
9/7/2018
This week we spent our group times discussing what the students hope to learn at school this year, and what rules we need to have at school so that everyone feels safe. In talking about what we hope to learn, we had a "book picnic" outside and read "Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come!" by Nancy Carlson. In this book Henry questions his mother about what he will learn at school. This helped us launch into our own shared writing about what we could learn this year. We ended this discussion with a surprise bubble activity. While we blew bubbles we paid close attention to what colors we saw in the bubbles. The next day we used liquid watercolors to paint bubbles that will be displayed to remind us of our hopes for the school year. The process of talking about what we can learn in school helped the students become excited for their learning, gave them a goal, and also opened up new possibilities for what may happen at school. We spent the second half of the week talking about rules and working as a group to generate what our rules will be for our classroom this year. We spent time talking about the need to be safe in the classroom, as well as being kind to each other. I took the 14 rules the children had suggested for the classroom, and together we divided them up into 4 categories, or Big Rules. Those Big Rules are: Be Safe, Be Kind, Take Care of the Classroom, and Listen to Others. Being able to pair a Big Rule with a small rule (Remember, Be Safe; have walking feet in the classroom) helps children understand the reason behind the small rule as well as building self awareness that will build self regulation. Highlights from the Week Building friendships and language skills at centerplay; mud soup and rainbow rock stores at recess! Using fine motor skills and counting to make a Pet Graph; exploring colors with paint mixing.
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April 2021
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