What an awesome week it has been! I got into our new classroom... Which was a little overwhelming to say the least. I knew that I wanted to ditch the desks and go for round tables to really encourage and support the idea of cooperative learning. I spent time with my new team members working on our learning targets for the first few weeks and charts to monitor student growth. (I will post pictures of them soon!) Pretty powerful work and planning. We wrote enduring understandings, long term targets, supporting targets, and began to match them to assessments of and for learning. Productive work! In the upcoming week we will be mapping out all the learning experiences that will help guide us through. I'm also part of a team that will be working to implement student-led conferences this spring. I couldn't be any more excited about this year!
Last Thursday, our entire faculty/staff participated in an event our school calls "Stepping Out." Every teacher made contact with each of the families in our classes and arranged for a time to visit them at home. We took each student a bag with a pencil, a note from us, and important information about Open House and a PTO Popsicle social held on Saturday morning. If families were unavailable, we left it on their door. It was AMAZING. What a great way to start off our year! Families were welcoming and students were so excited to meet and greet their teacher.
Tonight was our Open House. Our class had a great turnout! It was so nice to see the familiar faces of families and students that I had the pleasure of teaching last year and will again this upcoming school year. I also met our "new" students that will be joining our class this year. One of our new students, I actually knew from the past! I taught her older sister my first year teaching. My students were happy to see me and one another. It was exciting to see them introducing themselves to our new friends and greeting one another as they arrived. The community that was already established last year is back in action and they haven't missed a beat! I am so proud of them and can't wait to start our year together. Can't we just start tomorrow?!?!?
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