Happy New Year!

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Happy New (School) Year!  I am SO excited for this class.  In the first two days, they have already shown me how kind, enthusiastic, and capable they are.  We dove in on Wednesday by making our classroom rules together, exploring our library, and making Jitter Juice.  Click here to read a post from 2017 about this fun first day tradition.

Because our class is small this year, we have the opportunity to try some new ideas. I’m most excited about incorporating flexible seating into our routines.  I will write a post about this later on.  Flexible seating changed the look of our classroom.  Here’s a short video tour:

 

(Did you notice that my decorative theme is confetti, like Vanetti?  When I got married, that’s how a former student remembered my new name.  I loved the idea so much that I decided to adopt it.)

Yesterday, I got a chance to start seeing what the students can do because they completed short writing and math assessments.  We are also beginning to assess reading.  We ended the day with a classroom scavenger hunt, in which students worked to locate various items in our classroom.

Here’s to a great year!

A Fun-Filled First Day!

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Snack with friends and our new first and second grade assistant, Mrs. Leo

We had such a great first day today!  We created our classroom rules, which included ideas like, “Be safe,” “Be kind,” “Be respectful,” “Don’t give up,” and “Have fun!” We also learned important rules and routines, like what to do if your pencil breaks.  We read books, did a graphing activity, and danced together!

We had a very busy afternoon with library, LEGO, PE, and art.  Everyone left exhausted, but smiling.  See you tomorrow!

The First Day of School

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Wow!  We had such a great first day together!  The students all came to school excited and ready to learn.  Each and every one of them settled in smoothly and did a wonderful job beginning to learn our first grade routines.

One of my favorite things to do on the first day of school is to read the book, “First Day Jitters” by Julie Danneburg.  This story tells about Sarah Hartwell, who is really nervous about her first day at her new school.  After some coaxing by Mr. Hartwell and her new principal, she makes it to her classroom. Then, right at the end of the book, a big twist is revealed!  Ask your student what was surprising at the end of this book.

In order to calm our own jitters, we made a special batch of Jitter Juice!  First, we read this poem:

Then, we carefully poured the Jitter Juice into a big pitcher. (Some students correctly identified the Jitter Juice as sparkling lemonade, but shh!  Don’t tell!  It’s magic Jitter Juice!)

Each child was offered a small dixie cup to taste, but not before we added Jitter Jumpers!

We followed this up with a math activity in which we created a graph showing how many people liked Jitter Juice and how many did not like Jitter Juice.  I challenged the students to figure out how many people did not like it based on how many did like it, along with the information that we have 10 students in our class. I was so impressed with the strategies that were shared!

We spent the rest of our morning learning about how to find “just right” books in our library (more on this concept later), working together to create classroom rules, and practicing things like moving around in our new space.

Our afternoon was very full with Library, LEGO, PE, and Art.  What a fun first day!  I can’t wait for the rest of our school year!