A Great First Week!

          Thanks for checking in with our classroom blog!  I will typically post once a week.  I will let you know about what is going in our classroom.  I will share what the students did during that week and what we are going to be working on the next week.  If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at my school email.  I typically don't check my google email account.

    

A Great First Week...

     There was lots of nervous energy in the air as the kids came into school on Tuesday along with a lot of excitement!  We spent a lot of time this week getting to know one another.  We played a true and false game, worked on a class scavenger hunt, and created and shared our heart maps.  We also started to learn the routines of our classroom. 

     We focused A LOT on the idea of growth mindset this week!  We watched a lot of videos and did some activities around this.  We learned that our brains are always growing.  In fact, when things get difficult we are actually "growing" or strengthening the neurons in our brain.  We talked a lot about failing, but not giving up.  To go along with this, we completed a poster with an inspirational quote on it in art integration on Friday.  Mr. Martinez helped us create these posters which will eventually be hanging around the school to help inspire others to not give up and have a growth mindset!

     We started reading workshop on Wednesday with a reading interest survey.  I was able to get to learn about the kids as readers. I loved learning about the different genres that they are interested in, names of their favorite authors, as well as some of the hobbies or interests outside of school.  Knowing their hobbies/interests can help me point them in the direction of some great books! 

   We really focused on having a growth mindset in math this week.  We are using a new program this year called Engage New York.  It is a new program across the district.  The program has us starting with multiplying by 10 on the place value chart.  A lot of the vocabulary was a different than we were used to in the past.  We will continue to work on this new vocabulary and "strengthen" our neurons in the process!  :)

     Overall it was a great week!  It was so fun to see the excitement in the classroom this week.  I know we are going to have a great year of fun and learning!

Have a great weekend!

~Jen

One of my favorite growth mindset quotes:

If you think you can’t, you are right.  If you think you can, you are right!