The World is Our Garden

This week we kicked off our spring learning expedition, The World is our Garden.  Students traveled around to the outdoor classroom and through the various first grade classrooms to wonder and notice.

Students looked closely at the compost bin.

Students read the posters that last year's first graders created to teach our community about garden organisms.

Students looked at plants and wondered about the plant parts.

Students explored various sizes of rocks.  Students got to sift and observe the different sizes.

We will be working hard to answer:

What helps our garden thrive?

Collaboration

Students in our crew define collaboration as working together and listening to each others ideas. 

We have been working hard to collaborate in small groups.  Through discussion protocols using a talking stick, we talk about:
*pieces of high quality work
*accuracy and/or strategies of a math problem
*excerpt of a text

From these great discussions, students are coming up with criteria lists for math problems, close reading, and high quality writing.

We also had a collaboration challenge with our YO Buddies.  Partnerships were given one piece of paper, one pair of scissors and one glue stick.  They had to collaborate to make the longest chain they could.

 Our fourth grade buddies were excellent role models of actively listening and coming up with a plan before starting the challenge.  It was interesting to see what the partnerships came up with.

Students are practicing actively listening and openly sharing ideas.

100 Days Smarter

This week we celebrated the 100th day of First Grade!  Students came dressed like they were 100 years old and enjoyed a small parade with our other first grade crew members.  

In math, we enjoyed collaborating to build with 100.  This led to great conversations and reflection of collaboration, counting accurately and counting efficiently.  

In reading, we read 100 books as a crew.  We were so proud of our stamina.  Each student reflected on how they have grown as a reader after 100 days of first grade.  This was a great time of celebration!

It was so much fun making our 100th day snack containing 10 of 10 different items.  I was so interested to hear how they counted (by 1s, 10s, handfuls).  

Lastly, we ended the day with writing about what we will be doing when we are 100 years old.....

*I might be dead.

*I will continue to sing and dance.

*I will be sitting by the beach

*I will be living at Lincoln Meadows.

What a great day!