Tally Ho!

Week one is in the books. The first week of school is odd because of the amount of community building and assessment you need to do. Instead of diving into content, you are teaching procedures and trying to foster a sense of community. How well did I succeed in meet those ends? Fairly well.

I have a group of 21 kiddos, but 19 were there this week. It is a great number, allowing us to really talk to each other. The number of kids gave me a good chance to know each one's name, and know a little bit about each one. I was successful in cycling through, checking in with each one, and monitoring students. I'm not sure how successful I would have been on the first day of my first year with a much larger group. Could I have do so? Probably, but this was great.

I've already started the Writer's Workshop. We started with a letter to Mr. Hanson, allowing them to tell me things about themselves. We also started in on the small moments section, which is a starter for personal narrative. I realized early on that I did a poor job of modeling on the first day of small moments, but the following days were better. I was clearer in teaching what a small moment was, and how to zoom in to make those moments clearer from our minds eye.

The community building went well also. I had a kiddo say that the best part of the first week was that they got to learn the things they had in common with their peers. Yet another talked about meeting new friends, talking to old friends. No arguments, lots of kids on task, fairly good modelling.

This week we are doing some reading comprehension with non-fiction. We'll be looking at how texts bold words, and why those words are important (and how they help us understand the text). We'll also take our reading and apply it to labelling a blank world map. It is something that one of my partner teachers has done, at least the labelling, but I am going to use the map info and the reading comprehension on my own- thinking it provides context and solid teaching points. Oh non-fiction how I love thee.