We had a great first day of first grade to day. We have a great class - they are a really neat bunch of kids. We started off with some independent reading time, and then had Morning Meeting. We did some procedural stuff (lunch count, attendance, etc.), learned some class rules and routines, and then sang a song. After that, we started Reader's Workshop. We read a couple of books - Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes (about a little girl/mouse who is worried about the first day of school. We also read Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse, which is about two mice and has a nice friendship message. After that, the kids wrote what we call a "Reader Response" - they basically wrote/drew about some part of the book.
For our Writing Time today, we worked on a First Grade Time Capsule, which we will be sealing up this week, to be opened on the last day of first grade. We are going to be putting all sorts of things in it, so that we can compare ourselves, and see how far we have come nine months from now.
After that, it was time to get organized for lunch and recess time. We all headed down to the cafeteria for lunch, and then the kids went outside for their recess.
When we got back up to the room, we had a short read aloud time - two books by Robert Munsch: Pigs and David's Father. Then we headed back downstairs to the gym for PE with Mr. Hill and Mr. Peterson.
When we got back up from gym, we had Math Workshop. Today we took a couple of class polls and made class graphs about our families - the number of people in our families and the number of brothers and sisters that we all have.
After math, we took advantage of the nice weather and went out for a little recess. When we got back in, we got ourselves organized for going home - and making sure that everyone knew where they were going, and how to get there.
Then, it was time to head out - to parent pick-ups, to Minneapolis Kids, to Rec Plus, or to the buses.
