A fun start...without the jitters!

The month of September was a fun and exciting time in 1/2F.  We spent a lot of time getting to know one another, and we have a wonderful classroom community established.  All the children have been getting to know one another, and exploring what makes us all unique.  We are looking forward to an amazing year together.

A quick recap of our first month together...

On the first day of school we read two books that got us thinking about how some of us feel getting ready to return to school.  Reading First Grade Jitters (Robert Quakenbush) and First Day Jitters (Julie Danneburg), led us to some great discussions about how each of us were feeling, and we explored what "jitters" are.  We then read a great poem called Jitter Juice by Abby Mullins.  This fun poem was our first selection added to our Reading Folders, and many of you shared that you and your children enjoyed reading it together.

Once we had read, and talked about jitters, we decided to make some of Abby's Jitter Juice.  It was a HIT!  The students loved it, and all came up for seconds.  We decided that this really was special juice, because once we were done, no one had any jitters left!  Take a peek...

We also started exploring some of the centres in our classroom.  We read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, and the students loved retelling the story using the coconut tree and alphabet letters.

We have many budding engineers and architects in our room this year.  The students are always very eager to get together to build amazing creations.  When working together, the students were discussing height, length, and the structural stability of their creations.  Their oral language skills were in full swing as they planned, discussed and explained their creations.  This is another opportunity to strengthen and improve cooperation, team work and problem solving skills.  Stay tuned for more exciting building opportunities this year.  There are some great things in store!

We are very fortunate to be hosting a SMARTBoard in our classroom this year.  We will be sharing the Board with the Gr. 1 class next door, but we will still have many opportunities to use this technology to enhance our learning.  Not only do we use the SMARTBoard during lessons, but it is also open as a centre.  Here one student is working on creating addition sentences, and another pair of students are sequencing numbers on a hundred chart.

Please check back weekly for updates and evidence of new learning opportunities.  There are many exciting explorations beginning to take shape!  As an inquiry-based classroom, the interests and ideas of the students will be taking centre stage, and will lead our learning.  The possibilities are endless! :)