Character Riddles

At the end of each unit I try to have a culminating celebration where the kiddos can share their learning. For reading units though, it's often hard to find something that wraps up our learning in a shareable way.  Fortunately, at the end of our character unit, we had the perfect way to display our learning -- the kiddos used everything they had discovered about their characters to create riddles. 

{For our bulletin board, I drew the Lilly and Owen mice.}

The kiddos were so excited to write riddle clues! They kept hiding their papers and giggling to themselves.  They had to use their character's appearance, actions, and traits to develop the questions so this was also an informal assessments to see if they could determine defining characteristics.  The kiddos' riddles turned out great!  They've been having a lot of fun flipping up the questions every time they walk through the hallway.  I'll probably keep the bulletin board up for another couple of weeks until they finally get tired of reading the same riddles again and again. :)

We are Thankful

A few weeks ago, our Responsive Classroom committee got together to discuss our upcoming community bulletin board.  This board is something new that we instituted this year.  We wanted a place, on the first floor, to showcase community, diversity, and learning from around the school.  Our first bulletin board had the teachers' "hopes and dreams" for the school year.  Then we took pictures of kiddos around the school performing common routines and procedures, like walking in the hallway and hanging up their coats.

For our most recent board, we invited every kiddo in the school to share what they are thankful for on a half-sheet of paper.  In my own class, I read Splat says Thank You to introduce the idea of being thankful.  I'd never even heard of this great book until one of the other amazing first grade teachers told me about it.  My kiddos loved Splat and Seymour and the story was so sweet!  Plus, it definitely sent home the message about the importance of showing gratitude for others.  

Here are two of my favorites from the firsties:

Throughout the week, teachers turned in their classes' forms to me.  I compiled them onto a bulletin board with the title "We are thankful."  Around the edge of the board, another teacher printed out "thank you" in a variety of languages and fonts.  I love the resulting diversity on this board: some teachers took dictation, there's lots of invented spelling, older kiddos tried out cursive handwriting, and the pictures range from stick figures to full-color sketches.  There is also a lot of variety in what we are thankful for -- many kiddos were thankful for their family, friends, and pets, but we also got everything from candy to football. 

My favorite thing about this board though, was actually putting it up.  While I was in the midst of stapling, a couple of kindergarteners walked by with their moms asked what I was doing.  I explained the project and the kiddos recalled writing their own thankful notes.  They began selecting sheets for me to post up and reading each of the cards.  They were so excited that one of them pulled a notebook out of her backpack and began to create a list of other things she for which she was thankful!  So sweet!

*I ran out of room on the board, so now we have notes of thanks covering the windows to the office and library as well -- what a great thing to see when we walk around the halls! :) 

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!

Custodian Appreciation

National Custodian Appreciation Day was last week and my school invited classes to find ways of thanking our sweet custodians.  The timing worked out perfectly for me because we were in-between writing units and I needed something for the rest of kiddos to work on while the last few finished up their personal narrative stories.  

We started by defining the role of custodians in our school.  Most of the kiddos already know our custodians and generally know that they keep the school clean, but I felt it was important to point out all of the many jobs they take actually on around the building.  After we had a list of things that the custodians do to help us, I sent the kiddos off to write cards.

I was busy meeting individually with kiddos to review their personal narratives, so I didn't see the cards until I collected them at the end of writing time. They turned out so cute!  A couple of kids decided to write about how our custodians are always in the cafeteria to help "fix the tables" -- we are currently using a temporary folding table and it's legs have a tendency to fold under during lunch.   Most of the kids wrote sweet notes thanking the custodians for cleaning, mopping, sweeping, vacuuming, and keeping the school clean so that we can all learn. 

We set the cards up in the Staff Lounge, along with a banner made by one of the 4th grade classes.  I think the custodians got a kick out of reading the kids' writing and knowing they are very appreciated.