First Week of First Grade

Sep 9, 2016
3 min read

We've had a great week in first grade! I can tell how tired everyone is, though! I hope that everyone gets lots of rest, relaxation, and unstructured time with their families. The kids have worked incredibly hard at getting back into a routine. We've talked A LOT this week about perseverance, stamina, and "the power of YET". We are trying to change all of our "I can't" statements to "I can't YET, but I will try", or our "I don't know how" statements to "I don't know how YET, but I will soon learn!" We are on our way to building a positive classroom climate and community!

I am excited to hear this week how much the students in our class want to learn how to read! Soon, we will be off and running with reading groups, and I look forward to it very much!

Another thing we talked about this week is balance. There is a lot of balance in our classroom - we work hard, then we take a break to play/dance/sing/exercise, then we get back to work, then we take a break again. We do that back and forth balance all day long. It is important to me that the children get lots of exercise and movement throughout the day! Here are some photos to see what we've been up to on days 2, 3, and 4 this week!

We're making name banner self-portraits. We will finish these on Monday, and they will be on display in the hallway!

This week we read Goldilocks and the Three Bears. This story was a starting point for our STEM challenge (Science, Technology, Education, Math). Baby Bear presented us with a challenge. Instead of chasing Goldilocks off at the end of the story, Baby Bear wanted to build a bed for Goldilocks that would fit her better than the bears' three beds. So, the first graders accepted the challenge and got to work drawing blueprints of their ideas using the materials everyone brought in.

The beds had to be off the ground...

and the beds had to be able to sustain Goldilocks' weight (weighted down with pennies)...

Using the plans they made, our builders got right to work!

We earned FREE CHOICE time today!! Every week, our class has the opportunity to demonstrate teamwork, promptness, listening skills, and good citizenship skills. Working as a whole class, they earn points that can be used for free time on Fridays! We also have an individual point system where students work for individual points and rewards. It definitely pays to work hard like a first grader!

More Free Choice time!

We also worked on writing this week. First graders finished this sentence starter: First grade is....

We will work on moving from writing a few words at a time to well developed sentences containing capital letters at the beginning, finger spaces between words, and ending marks. We're already working on remembering how to stretch out our sounds to write down the words we want to say. These writings are hanging near our classroom. If you are in the building, check them out sometime! The first graders wrote down some great thoughts about first grade!