Building a Learning Community

Wednesday morning we filled in our second tens frame as we counted the days we have been in first grade. It's already been twenty school days. We have spent those twenty days learning procedures and expectations. We've hung up our work on our bulletin boards. 

The first twenty days have also allowed us to start building our classroom community as well. We read a great book, Heartprints, by P.K. Hallinin. The book talks about ways to show kindness to one another. The small acts of kindness that we show people leave 'heartprints' for both the receiver and the giver. During our morning meeting, we discuss ways to leave heartprints for others in our school community. We talked about ways to leave heartprints at recess and in the cafeteria. We talked about leaving those heartprints for both students and adults in our school community. We will continue to work on how we can show kindness throughout the school year.

We've also worked on building a reading community. We've learned how to listen to stories with active listening: eyes watching, ears listening, mouths waiting, hands still and legs crossed. We have participated in rereading stories together and singing songs. We learned how to recognize and read our classmates' names. 

Most importantly, we have practiced listening to the ideas of our classmates. As we read stories, we turn to share our thinking with a partner. Each partner participates in sharing their ideas and listening to their partner. In the beginning, students were each sharing their ideas without really responding to what the other had said. But this week, I began to hear those beginnings of a community. Students were listening to one another and I could hear them saying, " I was thinking the same thing as you," or "My thinking was a little bit different. I thought..." They were holding each other accountable too, because they wanted to hear their partner's ideas. We know how much we can learn from one another as well as the teacher.

We've been building community in Writers' Workshop as well. Each week, students are listening to a story to get ideas, sharing their writing ideas and writing independently. Every week, we meet together to share our fabulous writing. We sit in a circle with our stories in front of us. One by one, we sit on the stool and hold the microphone as we read our stories to our classmates. We are working on listening respectfully and thoughtfully- using this time to learn a little more about our classmates. We take the opportunity to thank our classmates for sharing their stories with us. We're practicing speaking and listening skills. 

SeeSaw has also allowed parents to join our learning community too. We are so excited to share what we are learning. I hope you saw new posts about our science experiment on sound. We love to see your comments and likes. Throughout this school year, we will continue to add to our SeeSaw journals. 

Thinking, listening and sharing are integral parts of building a classroom community where students learn.