connecting it all together

We have had a living document in our classroom; community expectations. Our conversations, reflections and representations of our school rules have shaped this document. When children noticed how careful their peers were with a math manipulative, we wrote we are careful. When children noticed how safe their peers were, we wrote we have calm bodies.

We added labels and Solveig wrote the word love. I printed pictures of the children working together and glued them to the document. As we neared the end of our week we revisited our rules again, ready to sign them. With our middle school reading buddies present (they are important members of our community) and a collection of fancy pens to choose from, the children passed our rules around the oval.

All of the children were patient and every member had the opportunity to carefully print their name. These community rules and expectations will live in our classroom. We will revisit and remember, we will continue to connect our community work and learning to our expectations. The children are the voice of our classroom.

 

 

With this important community work comes more responsibility and new experiences. On Wednesday we were ready to develop a check list for our open house, to plan and prepare for visiting families. We were also ready to have our first academic choice on Friday.

Open House

The children thought of the important things they wanted to share with our families. I wrote down their ideas and later took pictures of the spaces and things they wanted to share. We talked about a check list. Alice explained that a grocery list tells you what you need. A check list tells you what you need, too! Our list was important things the children wanted to share with their families.

On Thursday we practiced holding clipboards with our check lists and walking through our classroom. It was important and exciting work. Zoey had suggested we share our community rocks representing acts of kindness. We have already collected- and counted- 90 rocks!

 

 

 

 

Academic Choice

We had our first academic choice on Friday. Using our community expectations to guide our work and interactions, the children's choices were a reflection from our beginning of the year learning;

keva planks
small building (with rocks)
drawing lines
cutting and gluing shapes (Henri Matisse)
shape puzzles

Following our choice we needed to write two new labels for our classroom, creating a home for our keva planks and small building materials. The children found the words on our choice poster and carefully printed the words keva planks and small building on sticky notes. Our first academic choice was rich with exploration, expression and discussion.