It has begun. First, let me say it was very nice meeting everyone for Meet Your Teacher Night at Challenger Elementary. We had about 14 students come through the door of the classroom. I put in a little extra time this year and provided some treats for our families.
The next few days have been busy. We’ve spent quite a bit of time building our classroom community. Kids started with creating a Code of Cooperation. The class started with a cooperative game called the Hula Hoop Challenge.
Afterwards, we all came together and brainstormed what we should strive for to make sure we would be able to collaborate at the highest level. Once we had a list of ideas, we assessed…..
“To what extent can we agree to always try to follow the current Code of Cooperation.”
Here’s what we all came up with using a tool called a Consensogram that was created be David Langford.
The results seemed pretty positive. You can see most students thought it was perfect. They agreed at a 100% to always try and follow it. So, we accepted the Code and signed it to symbolize our acceptance.
Next, the class developed a purpose. This took some time. Kids quietly reflected on what their purpose was for being at school. They wrote a purpose statement. Next, table groups passed the statements around their tables and read their peers. They tried to identify the important words or phrases for each group. Groups shared their results and here’s the list we came up with.
A student’s example statement.
Eventually we were able to build a statement as a class.
“Our purpose for school is to learn and prepare for middle school, to become educated, improve our classroom skills, and overcome challenges throughout the year.”
We tried to use as many of the student ideas as possible for the purpose. It’s a purpose for the kids and by the kids. As a result, the consensogram was pretty overwhelming in regards to acceptance from the class.
Our class has started an art project as well. Again this is an activity that will help to strengthen our classroom community. We called it Value Art. Students are contrasting cool and warm colors to create contrast and highlight a value, or something that’s important to them. This piece will be posted around the room for the school year to remind us of what’s important to the class.
Another unit of study we began was Environments. We started to discuss what an environment was. Here’s what student’s said.
“A place where people and animals live.” -Lana
“A habitat where living things can survive.” -Juan
“A home for abiotic and biotic things.” -Jasmine
Next, we discussed what a terrarium might be.
“Maybe it’s like an aquarium.” -Yarelli
“It’s like an aquarium but just not underwater.” -Tashala
Wow! I’ve been blown away with the attitudes and contributions from our classroom. It seems to me the students in P-7 this year are very motivated to learn. So far, so good.