Pajama Day

We wore our pajamas to school today and spent lots of time cuddling up with a good book. We also searched for some good books to bring home to read during winter break. Ask your child to show you the books that they brought home.

Collaboratively Planned Stations

As the crew begins to take control of their learning, they are asking for and getting much more input into the stations we have in our classroom. Recently we had a crew meeting and took a look at each station and decided which ones to rotate out and which ones to rotate back in. I loved that their decisions weren't based on "fun" but on what they wanted to learn. Some highlights from the discussion:

• They really want to continue to work on learning to use chopsticks and write Chinese characters in the Chinese Culture station.
• They really want to continue to learn to code (computer programing) and asked for some further lessons on how to get better at these stations.
• They created a new station and named it Word Academy (after a vote) and decided all of the activities that they wanted to do at this station. The idea for this station came from a book we read called The Very Inappropriate Word. In this book the main character collects words and the crew wanted to be word collectors, too.
• They wanted to keep the basket of currency from around the world to explore.
• They wanted to get rid of the Spelling City station. They still want to work on spelling but they think that this app is too complicated to use and would rather work on spelling at the Word Academy Station or the Pocket Chart Station - both of these are hands-on stations, not apps.
• They wanted to add a Google Earth station because they love to visit other places in the world on this app and also browse the photos from other places in the world. This led to a big discussion because we would have too many stations if we added this station and they didn't want to get rid of any others (including i-Ready lessons and others that can be challenging). So we finally figured out that we could make the ShowMe station a free choice ipad station and then each child could choose each time they went to that station what they would do - make a ShowMe, visit Google Earth or some other app.

This is probably too much detail for you (and this isn't all we discussed) but I wanted to give you a taste of just how seriously they are taking the responsibility of deciding what they should learn and how they want to learn those new things. Below are a few photos and ShowMes to help you see what they are doing.

Kalyn and Nikelle made this basket and list of words at home one evening for the Word Academy Station. Students can add words to the basket or they can find words that they love on the word list and add them to their word notebooks.

I went to my teaching colleagues on Twitter and asked for some help with lessons for coding for first grade students and one teacher shared this link with me. Once a week, I am sharing a video from this site with the crew and I can already see the difference it is making. Check out Maddie's first Scratch, Jr. coding creation and then compare that to her second Scratch, Jr. creation. This was after watching just one of the 5 minutes videos.

Scratch, Jr. 1 by Maddie
Scratch, Jr. 2 by Maddie

Avery donated a fun new math game to our Math Station.

Lanterns

We have been learning about one of the biggest holidays in China - Chinese New Year (they just call it New Year or Lunar New Year or Spring Festival). We learned that they celebrate by making and/or lighting lanterns during the last day of the two week holiday. Today we made our own version of a lantern and decorated it with some of the Chinese characters we have been learning.


Important Dates
12/12 - 12/16 Climbing during PE from 1:15 pm to 2:05 pm
12/14 Pajama Day for First Grade
12/16 Fieldwork to Pacific Ocean Asian Market and Kings Land Dim Sum Restaurant 9:30 - 1:00
12/16 Bookworm Party at 3 pm - Everyone is invited.
12/19 - 1/3 Winter Break
1/13 No school for students - Professional Development Day for students
1/16 No school - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 

Giving to Others

Every year our school social worker, Ms. Allison, asks crews in our school if they would like to adopt a family in need for the holiday season. Our crew adopted a family this year and had several discussions about what the family needed and why they might need it. We don't know who they are but we know that they need a little help. Below is a photo of the crew with some of the gifts that they brought in for the family followed by a ShowMe created by Nikelle explaining why giving to others is important. Thanks to everyone for your generosity towards this family. Ms. Allison was able to help 86 families in need this year thanks to your donations. Thanks to Ms. Allison for caring so deeply about our community.

Arts and PE
Our Arts and PE class next week is PE. We will be climbing so have your child wear comfortable clothing and shoes. It would probably be best to skip wearing a dress or skirt next week since we will be wearing climbing harnesses.

Mannequin Challenge

Nicholas suggested that it might be fun for our crew to try the #mannequinchallenge. So today during Exploration Stations, we tried it. It was hard to hold still and not laugh but we tried hard. Our story was that the children tied up Ms. Meghan and I and took control of the room and were doing whatever they wanted. The irony here is that this was during station time and they really were doing things that they wanted since they are now helping me plan out what happens in each station. Enjoy the video below along with the sneak peek photo. If you get this blog post by email, you will need to go directly to the blog to view the video.

Library
We have library tomorrow. Please help your child remember to return his or her books.

Ms. Jenni

Today, Ms. Jenni, our speech therapist, came in to do a lesson about sounds that letters make and the correct way to make them. This lesson ties together our reading, writing, listening and speaking skills and it was a lot of fun, too. Thanks, Ms. Jenni!

Skyping with Mrs. Price's Class in Australia

We had a very busy day and lots of schedule changes. We had to live our other motto of "go with flow like seaweed in the ocean" many times. But we all did a great job handling all of the changes.

Now that daylight saving is in effect, we can Skype with Mrs. Price's class in Australia. We have one hour of overlap in our days - our last hour of school is their first hour Their school year is almost over - it ends on our winter break. They are excited for summer while we are getting ready for winter. In February when they come back to school, Mrs. Price will have a whole new class. Thanks Ms. Jen for helping try to get a few photos during this crazy time.