Genius Hour and More
Have you ever asked your child when they came home from school what they learned at school that day and when the conversation was over, you still didn't get a good picture of what they did? Often times kids will go home and not want to tell you what they learned or not be able to tell you specifically the things they worked on or learned. I want you to be able to have those meaningful conversations with your child and now you will have an extra opportunity to do so! This week we started fully implementing Genius Hour! This is a time every week that our class gets to spend focusing on skills and topics they have learned or are learning about currently and they get to show/tell about them. They are able to do this in a variety of ways, whether a voice recording, videos, pictures, etc. that are then all accessible to you at home! This week we introduced an app on the iPads called SeeSaw!
You received a parent letter on Wednesday in your child's folder telling you a little about the app and how you can access your child's learning portfolio from home (i.e. computer, tablet or smartphone). This app allows your child to complete various activities assigned by me or to complete open ended tasks where they get to share specific, detailed things that they are learning here at school! The best part is, you can access their individual portfolio and have a sit-down, meaningful conversation with them about their learning!!! Not only that, but you will also be able to leave comments on their posts that they can read and view later. There is definitely a lot of value in having that communication and feedback from not only their teacher but their parents as well. What a great way to show them how invested you are and interested in what they are learning!
As our very first posted assignment on Wednesday, we listened to the story called The Dot by Peter Reynolds. This is a terrific story about a young girl who learns self-confidence. The young girl learns that even though she may struggle at something (in this case, art) but with persistence, perseverance and a positive attitude, she was capable of great things! You can listen to the story here:
We applied this great lesson to various aspects of our learning. Whether we may struggle or think things are too hard, like reading or math or writing, if we persevere and maintain a positive attitude and mindset, we are capable of improving and showing growth! After listening to the stories, our friends were able to create their own unique dot. They were all able to show how each and everyone of them is unique and capable of being artists, in this case, and how no matter what everyone's dots looked like, they were all AMAZING!
These are just some of the dots that were created. Make sure to connect with your child's portfolio to see there's and hear about what makes their dot so unique and special! Don't forget to leave them an encouraging comment!
In addition to learning a new way to share new skills with you this week, we have also participated in Fire Safety! On Wednesday, we were visited by the local fire department and were able to see up close the equipment used in emergency situations as well as extremely important and helpful information about what to do in case there were an actual fire at home!
We had so much fun listening and participating in a friendly competition with our awesome firefighters (they were racing to see who could get all of their gear on first)!
I was so happy to have had the opportunity to meet with all of you for conferences and discuss areas of strength as well as areas for growth for the year! I am very excited about where we are heading in first grade and all of the AMAZING things your child will be learning and showing you!
I hope you enjoyed seeing your child's artwork and writing samples in the hall on your way down! We have not had a lot of opportunity yet this year to write short, small moment stories (more to come!!!), however I have seen quite a bit of improvement and growth already! We are working on using our writer's checklist during our writing, which will help us remember to use CAPS, ends.!?, finger spaces, and our best handwriting. This will continue to be a focus as we learn about and write throughout the school year, not only on the various genre stories we will work on but our daily work as well!
As a reminder, we are looking for volunteers for our first grade BOO GRAM fundraiser. If you did not sign up at conferences but would like to help out please let me know! Additionally, in order to help make our School-Wide Halloween Hike a success, we are looking for some donations towards our snack after the hike. If you are able to donate caramel (for dipping apple slices) and could send some in, it would be greatly appreciated. Individual cups are preferred, however a container will work great too, as we can divide that up into cups! Thank you for your involvement and participation!
Don't forget to refer to our class homepage for important dates as well as our district website for important CAPS information!
