Celebration of Learning

Whoops! Forgot to hit "publish" on this post from a few weeks ago...

This year, my school has a new "Celebration Policy" which outlines expectations for school and classroom events.  Specifically, we will no longer have cupcakes for birthdays, or a costume parade at Halloween (you can read about last year's Halloween Parade here).   Instead, we will continue to teach, read, learn, and share about holidays as they come up during the year; we will continue to honor students with stories and special activities on their birthdays; and we will continue to invite families in to celebrate students' achievements throughout the year.

The goal of the new policy is to keep the focus on the students (and less on candy, costumes, or cards), and to celebrate what matters -- their hard work and accomplishments.  Personally, I also wanted to find better ways of including my families in celebrations, not just providing them with a photo opportunity.  

As I searched for suggestions about how to celebrate with my students and their families, I found this great article on the Responsive Classroom website about "Learning Celebrations."  The author expresses the same concern I've had, "The parties and celebrations had their benefits, but they didn't fully achieve the purpose I had in mind."

I decided to host my own learning celebration to honor the end of the first six weeks of school (all classes at my school are required to host a family event at this time of the year).  As we neared the end of the first six weeks of school, I began to talk with my kiddos about how far we'd come since the start of school.  I pointed out all of procedures we'd practiced, books we'd read, and lessons we'd completed.  We talked about how we could share these things with our families.  The kiddos were so excited about the idea that their parents could come in see them do "first grade things"!

On Friday afternoon, our classroom filled with adults and the kiddos got to show off their first grade skills.  They read to their parents from their book bins and personal narrative stories.  They taught their parents how to do a word sort and how to play the "Roll and Record" game at the math table.  They showed their parents how to write compliment notes to their peers.  Finally, we all sat around the carpet to do a Closing Meeting.  The parents and kiddos shared their "highs" and "lows" of the day -- almost everyone agreed that the high of the day was spending time together celebrating our learning!

I realized that not only was this learning celebration an opportunity to truly include our families in our learning, but it was a great review for the kiddos, and allowed us to have some important discussions about families and celebrations.  As the kiddos created invitations for their families a couple weeks ago, we talked about how some parents don't live in the same house and some kiddos might make more than one invitation.  Then we talked about how some parents work far away or can't take off work to come to school.  My sweet kiddos immediately suggested that if a friend didn't have a parent attend, they would "share" their parents.  We talked about the importance of being able to share the things we've learned so that our parents would learn about our community.  It was so special to see parents and kids side-by-side counting, reading, spelling, laughing, and smiling -- definitely a highlight of my teaching career!