Hopes and Dreams

As we have been building community, learning routines and expectations, and diving into the social and academic work of first grade, students have been thinking about their hopes and dreams, or goals, for the year. Each student chose one of these hopes and dreams to add to a class book we will create to show at Open House next week! Some of the students' hopes and dreams are to get better at using the monkey bars outside, to get better at drawing, reading, writing, or using technology, to learn harder math, or to learn to tie their shoes! These are all exciting goals for first graders. I am posting a photo we took of each child modeling their hope and dream and you can ask them about it at home!

Math Stations

Throughout the month of September our class has been working on building academic routines in addition to friendships and community. One of the things we do every day is to work in rotating math groups so that students get to play a cooperative partnered math game or work in their math journal, meet with me for new learning, and work on Dreambox (an individualized online math program that lets students practice math skills at their own level, independently, in a fun way). We start math each day with a whole class warm up or introduction of something new then students rotate between these three math stations. Below are some photos of students working in these groups. 

Students are able to access Dreambox at home or remotely by clicking on the link at the right hand side of this blog under "Student Links." They are also able to access their RAZ Kids reading accounts, Lexia accounts (if they are in the Title 1 reading class), and Everyday Math accounts (we have not explored this one together yet) through the links on this blog as well. Students may have already memorized their passwords but, if not, password cards will be coming home next Monday for home access.

Fall Friends Bulletin Board

We have been spending a lot of time this month getting to know each other and building a classroom community. This week we changed our hallway bulletin board to a cute fall theme that also helped us continue to learn about each other.

Students cut out two paper pumpkins and stapled them together so they could flip open. They put three clues about themselves on the front  (such as "I have blue eyes," "I like soccer," "I have a cat") and their photo on the inside as the answer to the riddle. This morning we used these for a greeting/activity before putting them on our bulletin board. Each student held one of the pumpkins and read the clues so we could all try to guess which person's photo was inside. After we guessed whose pumpkin it was the student holding the pumpkin greeted the person who had created it.

We had a lot of fun continuing to learn more about each other with this project and now we also have a cute bulletin board for you to check out at Open House next Thursday. We hope to see you there!

PBIS Whole School Celebration

UMS students have all been working to earn Champ Bands (see earlier posts) by following our school rules (be safe, be kind, and do your best) as part of our PBIS program. Students earn these individually then add them to their class container of bands. When the class container is full classes have a celebration in class then dump the bands into the whole school containers near the cafeteria. On Thursday afternoon we filled the whole school containers for the first time! As a whole school celebration students and teachers ate lunch together out on the playground Friday. This was a wonderful way to celebrate and to help show the kids that everyone at school is working together toward our common goal of making UMS a safe, kind, hard-working learning community!

Upcoming Events

I am just reminding everyone that tomorrow, Tuesday, September 19 is picture day at UMS! Don't forget to send your completed picture form and payment in with your child. There will be a $10 late fee for orders not received tomorrow.   If you prefer to order online, go to www.bsnap.hhimagehost.com .  You will need to put in our password which is:  ums317 

Also, the first week of October is our fall book fair at UMS. Flyers about the book fair will go home tomorrow. If you would like to know more about it ahead of time check out the link below.

 http://www.scholastic.com/bf/unionmemorialschool1

PBIS week 1

This was our first week of doing PBIS at UMS and it was a great success (for more information on what PBIS is please see a post I put up a few days ago). All of the students were excited and have been working hard to earn Champ Bands by showing expected behaviors as practiced in class and around the school. Students are especially proud when teachers from other classrooms notice them doing what is expected and hand them a band in the hallway, the cafeteria, in a unified arts class, etc.

Our class filled our class bucket with bands every day and had daily celebrations with other classes who had filled their classroom buckets (we did mixed play times as celebrations by mixing up the two classes who had filled their buckets and having a free choice time with kids we don't usually get to see often). After filling the class bucket and having a class celebration we dumped our bucket of bands into the large whole-school bins where all classes are adding bands to work toward a whole school celebration!

This afternoon (Friday) all four first grade classes finished filling our classroom buckets around the same time and we decided to do a first grade celebration having popsicles at the end of the day. We hoped to have them all do this together outside but, alas, it rained again so we ate popsicles in our own classrooms. Still fun though!

Here are some photos of champ bands on a student's wrist, in our classroom container, the school containers (they are not per grade level -- we all work together to fill one bin at a time working toward 3 full), as well as photos of our popsicle party!