Fun Photos

The Learning Challenge

This is an excellent video about the whole process of learning. I watch it again every year to help me get in the right mindset for teaching. I think you all will enjoy it, too.

The LearningChallenge

The Learning Challenge with James Nottingham from Challenging Learning on Vimeo.

Important Dates
9/21 No School - Professional Development Day for Teachers
10/5 RAD ~ Renaissance Adventure Day
10/8-10/19 Fall Break
10/22 No School - Teacher Work Day
11/6 No School - Professional Development Day for Teachers
11/21-11/23 No School - Thanksgiving Break
12/24-1/7 Winter Break 

Family Pictures

The first activity of our "We Are Family" Expedition was to talk about how many people are in our family and to draw a picture of them and label each person in the photo. Be sure to check out our display in the hallway right outside our door. A photo is below along with several other random photos from the week.

Learning is Messy!

Learning is messy! I don't necessarily mean a physical mess although it can be that. I mean that everything your child learns is connected to every other thing that he or she learns. Learning really can't be completely compartmentalized into math, reading, writing, etc. It is easy to see how reading and writing are related and how learning something about writing can improve your reading and vice versa. Other contents seem to separate more easily but are actually all connected, too. That is one of the basic tenets of Expeditionary Learning - we embrace the fact that learning is messy and all tangled up and not neatly segmented into discrete areas. Below are a just a couple of examples of messy learning in first grade.

We recently created graphs using name cards during a word work lesson. We created a graph by the number of letters in our names and then we created a graph based on the number of syllables in our name. How is this messy? Well, while we were thinking about letters within words and length of names, we were also learning to physically create a way to organize information to understand it better. When we created the graph of syllables in our names we began to think deeply about why this graph looked different from the previous graph. We thought a lot about how names might have lots of letters but not as many syllables. We wondered what a name with 10 syllables would sound like. We related this to our morning drum circles and thought about the beats in each name and how you would drum them. In first grade we casually introduce new learning mixed in with other/older learning and after a while we begin to notice that we know about a lot of things like: graphs, letters, words, syllables, music, naming conventions and more.

Many more graphs are to come in math and as part of our Expedition.

Short Video of Us Creating the Name Graphs - Why is Hannah's name funny? Because it is first grade and it was funny to the crew that so many kids had 2 syllables in their name.

Every Child is a Writer!

I love this short 3 minute video that explains the developmental stages of writing in young children to parents. Please take 3 minutes to watch this - it will help you see the beauty in your child's writing.

Every Child is a Writer 

Library - We have library tomorrow. Please help your children remember to bring their books back!

Also, remind them to bring back their classroom book bags! 

Efficient Counting

We are learning to count efficiently. It is usually more efficient to count large groups of items by 2s, 5s or 10s rather than one by one. In order to do this we have to first learn to count by 2s, 5s and 10s. You can help by counting with your child in the car to and from school. Count forwards by 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s and then count backwards (this will help your child in the future with subtraction). Counting by 5s and 10s comes in very handy when we begin to count the value of nickels and dimes. Telling time on an analog clock (one with hands) depends on knowing how to count by 5s, too. So these are important skills for your child to have. We practice these skills at school by doing choral counts as a group, by counting around the circle with each child saying the next number in the series, by writing out the counts in our math notebooks, by counting large groups of items efficiently, by making tally marks for numbers (this is basically counting by 5s), and by lining up while counting by a certain number.

During a morning meeting, we had to line up in order. We each had a card with a number on it and we had to count by 5s to get in order. The tricky part was that we were not allowed to talk to each other while getting in order. We had to communicate in other ways in order to be successful. We were so proud when we did it as you can see (or not) in the photos below.

Expedition

Today we had a silent gallery walk. During this walk we looked at artifacts that are related to the new Expedition that we are starting this week. It was hard to walk around silently and not share our ideas yet. This practice (called Mystery Piece) increases the engagement and the "need to know" about our new Expedition. Then we talked more about any thoughts we had and I did share with them that our Expedition is called "We are Family" and that our first case study would be about our own families.  I am not sharing with them what our second case study will be about yet so please don't share if you already know. We have a Mystery Piece for that case study, too.

You must teach first grade if a child brings you this and you assume it is a toy. FYI - It was not a toy! We did dispose of it and get those cute little hands washed right away. :)

Important Dates
9/21 No School - Professional Development Day for Teachers
10/8-10/19 Fall Break
10/22 No School - Teacher Work Day
11/6 No School - Professional Development Day for Teachers
11/21-11/23 No School - Thanksgiving Break
12/24-1/7 Winter Break

More specific details about our Expedition are below. Some of these learning targets will be meet in other areas of study outside of our Expedition.

Enduring Understanding

• There is diversity and sameness in the world
  

Essential Question

• How do people learn to get along in the world when there are so many similarities and differences?

Outcomes: Long Term Learning Targets:

• I can analyze patterns and chronological order of events of the recent past.
• I can compare and contrast characteristics of multiple sources of cultural differences.
• I can analyze family and cultural traditions in the United States in the past.
• I can analyze geographic tools such as maps and globes.
• I can deconstruct my biases.
• I can analyze how different groups and communities interact with each other and the environment.

Guiding Questions

• What can we learn from studying the past?
• What is important to understand about the rest of the world?