March Madness!

Things are CRAZY GOOD in first grade! There's lots of FUN things happening and we continue to work really hard!!! Please check out all that we are doing - lots of fun photos and videos for you this week!

I had a GREAT time presenting at the MACUL conference in Grand Rapids last week, and things ran really smooth in the classroom with Mrs. Mercier as our guest teacher. I was impressed with her great notes about how hard students worked, and about their nice, kind behavior. Thank you for reinforcing school expectations in my absence! Great teamwork, everyone!! I brought back LOTS of cool ideas, toys, and inspirational stories for our students. Read on to find out more!

Techy Toys

This is a new favorite tech toy in first grade! This is a Merge Cube and it is the COOLEST! It has lots of apps, and more educational apps coming soon. We are exploring the Galaxy app that fits right in with our solar system unit in reading and science! Check us out! We are holding planets, the sun, and even practicing reading skills by reading the fun facts embedded in app. SO FUN!

We are AUTHORS!

We have been working VERY hard to write like authors. We wrote our first two descriptive writings using the 5 senses. First, we wrote about Astronaut Ice Cream and we also wrote about animals that we have been reading about in our phonics books. They have done an OUTSTANDING JOB! I am really proud of their hard work. We also published our writings on SeeSaw. We hope you have had time to check them out!

Students are working on peer editing!

We have switched up our math routine a little bit on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. On these days, students will do small group math stations - and they are LOVING the SeeSaw math station where they receive a mini guided practice lesson from Mrs. Powell with a screencast video. It is fun for them to work at their own pace and check their work for accuracy.

This week brought a couple of opportunities to teach about learning from our mistakes. Luckily, school is a GREAT place to make mistakes, problem solve, and learn to fix them up! In our classroom, students have opportunities to fix up work that they may have rushed through or not put their best effort into, or just need a second try if things didn't quite work out. Sometimes, things seem hard - but that doesn't mean we bail on the task at hand. We spent some time talking about perseverance, stamina, and hearing about inspirational people who know what HARD is really about.

Meet 3-time olympic medalist, Bonnie St. John. From the age of 5, she has had a prosthetic leg. At sixteen, her best friend encouraged her to try downhill skiing. With only one leg, it was HARD! She loved it, though, and rose to the challenge. She went on to medal 3 times in the paralympics alpine skiing. She has a devastating story of going from the fastest skier in the world, to third place, all because when she fell, she wasn't the 'quicker getter upper', as she puts it! Her platform is all about resiliency....when conditions are less than perfect, press on, and be the quicker getter upper. Look her up online - she's quite amazing!

We watched clips of paralympic hockey, and alpine skiing - and were amazed at how well these athletes perform given their circumstances. We are learning to be resilient when things get tough, to persevere, to encourage and support others, and to always do our best!!

If you have a chance to watch the paralympics with your family, please do! It opens the door for lots of wonderful conversations and connections!

Have a great weekend, everyone!!!