Creating Classroom Expectations

Last week we read the book David Goes to School by David Shannon.

Have you ever read it? It is the perfect book to open a discussion about classroom rules and expectations.

We brainstormed rules/expectations that we thought were important for our class this year. Then the students had to pick the three expectations that they felt were the most important and write about them.

It is really interesting to see what matters to different kids. For some keeping hands to ourselves was a huge priority and for others it was things like being quiet or safe. 

I got a great freebie on TpT (Teachers Pay Teachers) for making a David. It is by Angie Neal. You can find it by clicking on the caption underneath!

Find it HERE!!!!

We made our David's last Friday. You should have seen the class all diligently working on making their Davids. It was awesome!!! They were so focused, so intent on the activity. I think I see some more cut and past projects in our future!!!!

Anywho, here are what ours ended up looking like...

Aren't they great? What you can't see is the writing that I put with each one. I attached their writing about which expectations are most important to them. 

This coming week we will be tallying which rules got chosen the most and using those as a basis for a class expectations chart we will all sign. This will be posted clearly in the classroom and reviewed daily as part of our Calendar routine. 

I was very pleased with how this lesson turned out. I never like to do the same thing in the same way from year to year and this was a big hit with the class AND turned out some great thinking about how we want our room to look, feel and be. A win-win!

Stay tuned for our expectations chart which should be done and ready to post about by the end of this week.

Cheers!

Olwyn

It is amazing to me that October is here already! Where did the first few weeks of school go? It seems that every year of teaching goes faster than the one before. I am happy to say that even with the job action that teachers here in BC are currently doing, our school year started smoothly and everything in the classroom is moving along as always.

Friday was our Terry Fox Run at school. We walked over to a nearby park and did the run. If you don't know about Terry Fox, he is a true Canadian hero. His story is inspiring and we do a run in his honour each year. It is a way to pay tribute to him and also raise money in the fight against cancer. Check out this wonderful video about Terry Fox on youtube here.

With job action we were not allowed to collect donations this year so all families had to donate online. I hope that we did well with donations. Our school has a wonderful reputation as a big fundraising school. I hope that we have kept the tradition alive with this latest fundraiser to help find a cure for cancer.

After missing two days of school last week trying to get over this cold (I am still fighting it but am definitely on the mend) I forced myself to stay late on Friday to hang up our self-portraits. I was seriously exhausted after doing the Terry Fox run in the morning and having our first pizza day at lunch but I was determined! I finally finished around 6pm and headed home. It was a late day but worth it. They are so wonderful and add such a nice tone to our walls. I tried to put these into a slide show but for some reason my computer won't copy the video over to the blog. I finally gave up and uploaded all the self-portraits. Check them out. Aren't they wonderful?

I am missing one self-portrait for a student who came into our class after we made these. I will have to get him to do one this week.

In other class news, we are working on patterns and sorting. Tomorrow I am going to put more time into getting our math stations going. We have been doing lots of small group activities but I have yet to have them practice the actual routine of doing the math stations. This week my goal is to get the math stations up and running. I am using my previous methods for teaching math combined with things I have learned from Laney Sammon's Guided Math books and the book Math Work Stations by Debbie Diller. I have very high expectations for my math program and know that this class will quickly figure out the station rotation and get to work. Wish me luck!

I will be using the book The Button Box on Tuesday for our Math & Literature lesson. I created a couple of worksheets for the students to use after we have worked with real buttons sorting them by different attributes. If you would like to have a copy of the assorted buttons click here. The kids will get to decide on the attribute they will use to sort the buttons. Shape, colour, design etc. I will post some pics when I have them!

I have been teaching the grade 1's their first Social Studies unit. Twice a week, we group all the 1's together with me while the 2's go to the other two teachers in our pod. The grade 1's are learning about Canadian symbols. So far we have learned about the maple leaf and Canadian flag. We have also learned about some Canadian animals. This week we will be learning about hockey. I expect that most of the kids can teach this part! I am sure that they know more than i do about the sport!!!!

Here's to finally getting over this cold and having a good week!

Ms. Hughes

How to get through a day when you are exhausted...

the answer? choosing time!!!! my class so far is awesome. i have 9 grade 1's and 12 grade 2's. they work and play together so well. i am crossing my fingers that this is not just a honeymoon period and that it will last. i may cross my toes and eyes, too!

at this time of year my main goal is to have students really enjoy being at school and in our classroom. i want them to slowly build stamina to work for longer periods of time. to that end, we are spending our days doing a seatwork type job followed by a short choosing time. i repeated this three times today. the activities were not difficult but they allowed me to go over expectations for scissor and glue use. we also learned how to put pages into our duotangs. we did one of our September poems. it comes from one of the old readers i found in the cupboard years ago! the class had to read the poem and add the pictures to their page.

to get a copy of the poem and the pictures to cut out and glue on click here.

Ms. Hughes