Classroom Rules

In these first weeks of school, we have been working hard at establishing rules and procedures.  We have discussed at length why it is important to go to school and what we hope to accomplish this year.  The students each have shared their hopes and dreams for first and second grade.  The children have great goals for this year like to make new friends, read lots of books, do art, learn more about science, and have fun.

Because we all have important hopes and dreams for the year, we needed some classroom rules to help everyone reach their goals.  So, we established four important classroom rules:

1. Show respect and manners.

2. Keep hands, feet, and objects to yourself.

3. Follow directions quickly.

4. Work hard and do your best.

 

Pretty awesome thinking.  Our four rules keep us safe and help us learn.  The students developed actions to go with the rules.  Here is a quick video of the Connected Combo classroom rules:

Visualizing

In second grade, we are starting the year working on specific reading comprehension strategies.  Our first focus strategy was visualization.  Visualizing strengthens reading comprehension skills as students gain a more thorough understanding of the text they are reading by consciously using the words to create mental images. As students gain more deliberate practice with this skill, the act of visualizing text becomes automatic. Students who visualize as they read not only have a richer reading experience but can recall what they have read for longer periods of time.

Mr. Palmer did two different activities with the second graders to help them practice visualization.  First the students read a short play of the fable The Lion and the Mouse.  There were no pictures on the script, so the students had to visualize the story.  It was obvious in the students' second reading of the play that they had created some mental images.  The students couldn't help themselves, when reading it the second time they used great expression and actions to "act out" what they had imagined in their heads.

The second visualization activity was to use the imagery from a Jack Prelutsky poem about a giant.  The poem had great descriptive language to describe the giant.  Mr. Palmer read the poem and the students drew the giant descriptor by descriptor.  Then, Mr. Palmer reread the whole poem and the second graders drew their mental image of the giant.  It was fun to look at all the different visualizations.

Learning Letter Sounds

In first grade phonics and spelling, we are starting the year by reviewing letters. We are working on handwriting, knowing the letter sounds, matching capital and lower case, distinguishing beginning and ending sounds, and reading and writing words beginning with the focus letter. To practice these important foundational reading skills, one tool we are using is the iPads and a series of phonics apps.

We have developed a phonics routine to review and develop these skills. First, we watch and sing Jack Hartman's Letter Sound Song. Then, we introduce the focus letter. The children are really enjoying watching the StoryBots video clips for each focus letter. You will notice I have linked all the StoryBots videos to the button bar at the top of the blog.

After doing the introduction of the focus letter as a whole group, the children set to work on a series of apps.  The students work through Letter School, Starfall, Letter of the Day, and Sound Sort.  In each app, the students get specific and guided practice at writing the letter, identifying and discriminating the sound, and reading words beginning with the focus letter.  The students get to work at their own pace and receive specific and immediate feedback on how they are doing on the skills.  The apps are designed to help students on areas of struggle and challenge and advance students when they are ready.

While the iPads are an important and powerful tool for our learning, it is not the only way we are learning.  Having balance in everything is extremely important.  When reviewing letters and sounds, our activities have ranged from traditional paper/pencil work, wonderful read alouds, art oriented review, singing and dancing, cooperative activities, whiteboard practice and independent skill work.  For instance, after we read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, we made our own classroom tree.  Students use the tree they made as reference to sort capital and lowercase magnetic letters.

We Are Special

In social studies and in reading, we are starting a unit on making friends.  This week we discussed how being a good friend starts with being kind to ourselves.  In addition to learning the song above, we read the wonderful book Rainbow Fish (click on the title to see a video of the book read aloud).  In Rainbow Fish, the fish has all these sparkly scales, but he is not truly happy until he shares that special part of himself with others.  We talked about the things that makes each of us special, our likes and dislikes, and our similarities and differences.  We even made a glyph to represent some of these things.

Our fish glyphs followed these directions.  The students had to color the fish to represent his/her different characteristics.

The Rainbow Fish activity allowed us to learn lots about each other.  The students enjoyed sharing their glyphs with each other and finding the similarities and differences.  Besides allowing the students an opportunity to get to know each other better the glyphs also gave me insight into the students' preferred learning styles.  It looks like I will be incorporating a lot of art, music, and movement into lessons this year!

Character Rings

Our Olympic theme gave us an opportunity to discuss important characteristics that make champions.  As we have been learning about different Olympians and gold medal moments, we have been seeing similar character traits.  We connected five important character traits to the Olympic rings and have been discussing how these traits can help us have gold medal performances this year.

Dream Big and Believe in Yourself

While all the rings connect and overlap, the first two we discussed are really linked.  As you saw in the first day post, we read an inspiring picture book biography about Nadia Comaneci.  We also watched a video of her perfect 10 routines.  However, those perfect 10s didn't just happen.  Nadia had to set goals and work hard to achieve.  We used the read aloud Nadia The Girl Who Couldn't Sit Still as a springboard for writing our own goals for the upcoming year.  The first and second grade students have a lot they want to accomplish this year.  I can wait to get started.  Here are a couple example goals that students wrote:

My goal is learning.

My goal is to listen.

My goal is to get better at math.

My goal is to read harder books.

My goal is to be the best I can be.

Sportsmanship ~ Showing Respect

We used the red ring to discuss sportsmanship and showing respect.  Showing respect seemed to come up in almost everything we did the first two days.  From greeting fellow students and teachers with eye contact and a handshake to pushing in our chairs and cleaning up after ourselves, opportunities to show respect are everywhere.  We also practiced sportsmanship by playing a math game.  Of course, all the students wanted to win the game, but more importantly we focused on learning and having fun.  We show good sportsmanship whether we win or lose.

Kindness

Beyond sportsmanship, to have a gold medal year we need to be kind to one another.  Many of the students knew the Olympic moment where the two runners collided and then helped each other finish the race (click here for video clip).  If you watched the slide show of the children's best part of the first day, you noticed that most of them mentioned friends.  This group of students have such wonderful hearts.  Our year is going to be amazing because these children already understand the importance and joy of spreading kindness.

Teamwork

Last but not least, we used the green Olympic ring to represent teamwork.  We have a unique team that combines first and second grade.  I think our different backgrounds will give us strength. One team building activity we did this week was creating a puzzle. Each student got a puzzle piece to design. Then, we gathered on the floor, each student with their piece, and worked together to assemble the puzzle. The students discussed strategies and encouraged each other. This puzzle was different from other puzzles the students had put together because many of the traditional puzzle strategies wouldn't work. For example, the students couldn't match up colors because they each decorated their puzzles individually. When it was complete, each child's unique piece fit together to form the Connected Combo!