Making our Class Our Own

    Each year I spend a lot of time in the summer thinking about the classroom - where centres will go so materials can be accessed easily, how students will sit so they can work together well, where charts and "bump it up" walls will go.  I always put up a multitude of brightly coloured paper and trim on bulletin boards and alphabet friezes and number lines.  Everything is all ready for learning to begin.  When the children arrive in September, I hope they find the room bright, cheerful and engaging. 
     This year, at the request of our Principal to consider the new research about the classroom being a "Third Teacher", I took more time to think about how I decorate.  The "Third Teacher" theory is based on the idea that the children should take an active role in the construction of the classroom learning. The walls reflect what we value (the children's work and thinking) and the wonderful learning that is taking place.  I took a step back and thought about how my decorating must be over-powering with its rainbow-variety of colours and patterns. 
     In June, our wonderful Principal asked that all teachers keep the "Third Teacher" idea in mind while decorating, and to try ONE bulletin board with brown craft paper, so the children's work will "shine" against it.  I am happy to report that our staff has taken this suggestion to heart and the whole school is awash in brown bulletin boards.  My bright, colourful and over-stimulating room is gone, replaced with a room that is bare, but calm and peaceful.  My Principal was right.  It is amazing how great the children's work looks against the plain background.  We began the first day of school with a tour of the room, and when I explained that the walls were bare because they were to help me decorate it with their work and learning, a few hoots of joy were heard! Who knew that would be so popular?.
     We have begun to personalize our classroom by making a student-created word wall and a "pride wall" to display student work.  We will use these spaces to help us in our daily work.  The word wall will help us remember tricky words while writing, and the pride wall will build our confidence and show our progress. Our next step is designing the trim for the bulletin board in the hallway where we will display our work to visitors and creating a new number line.  We have our learning goals for the week displayed, and we are slowly creating success criteria.

I can't wait to see how our classroom looks in June!

P.S.  I wonder if the kids could help me with changing the background on this blog...

Welcome to a Wonderful Year of Learning!

     Last week we began a wonderful adventure- a year of growing and learning from each other.  I am very priviledged to have the best job in the world, as I get to teach, laugh and learn with our 18 new friends.
     Our first objective for the month of September is getting to know our friends, our classroom, and our rules and routines.  We have been very successful in reaching our goals so far.  One vital part of learning is feeling comfortable enough to take risks and sometimes make mistakes. We have been playing co-operative games and sharing information about ourselves to help us make our classroom a community.  The first step in creating a community is learning to talk meaningfully to each other.  "Accountable" talk will be an essential part of our program this year.  We learn so much more by collaborating and sharing our ideas and experiences.  Each year, the students surprise me with their insights and creative thinking.  I hope that the students will leave our class in June knowing that they play an active and important role in their learning.  Please support your child's curiousity and sense of wonder by discussing what they know, what they want to know, and what they have learned at home.
     So far, we have discussed topics which everyone can relate to - our first day fears, how special our names are, our favourite books and t-shirts and five things that we love.  We are presenting our "Me in a Bag" assignments and I am learning a great deal about everyone's interests and abilities.  I look forward to teaching and learning with you this year 1J!

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2013, a wonderful new "fresh start".  As all the children entered today after being away for two weeks, the excitement of being with people you missed and that you enjoy learning and working with was palpable.  We are truly fortunate to have such a caring and respectful class who work so well together.

 A new year always reminds me to take stock of all things I am thankful for.  A friend the other day remarked that she has learned a lot from her children, and it got me thinking that I am truly lucky to be a teacher, as I have learned so much from all of the children I have taught, in addition to the lessons my own children have imparted.  We can learn so much from others, and this year I hope we can all learn from all the different, special talents and perspectives that we bring and appreciate each other as both learners and teachers .  We are all works in progress, but together we can become a masterpiece!

Here's to another wonderful, new year of adventure and learning!

Mrs. Jinks

We Are Fortunate!

The winter season is a perfect time to reflect on how fortunate we are and how lucky we are to live in a free and peaceful country where people help each other. This holiday season we are showing our kindness, generosity, and thankfulness in three ways.
We are fortunate to have Sgt. Liberty Kitchen, an air cadet and daughter of our amazing Educational Assistant Ms. Kitchen, involve us in her fantastic Christmas card program for the second year. Each student at Hugh Beaton is writing to a soldier stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan this Christmas. We are extremely lucky to have these brave people protecting our freedom each day. We hope our card and pictures brightens their day and makes being away from home during the holidays a bit easier.
We are also bringing in canned food to donate to needy families. To date, we have brought in 56 cans, but we have a goal of 100 cans. We will continue to think of others as we are grocery shopping with our families.
Our school is also donating Christmas gifts to 20 children through the Children's Aid Society and to children living at our local Women's shelter, Hiatus House. Our class is responsible for donating toys, books and clothes to two baby boys with ages ranging from newborn to age two. We enjoyed brainstorming items that a baby boy would love to see under his tree Christmas morning!
We hope that these simple acts will help someone else have a happy holiday. We are very fortunate to be able to "pay it forward". That is what kind people do.

A Busy Time

The end of October and early November is a busy time in Grade One. We are finishing our DRA testing to better determine your child's reading level, we are testing your child's sight word recognition and diving headlong into progress reports and the writing workshop.
I love this time of year as it means progress reports and Parent-Teacher Interviews. It gives me a chance to talk to parents about their child's progress and to learn more about your child as a person, not only as a student. Thank you to all the parents who took the time to speak to me either before the Parent-Teacher night, or on that night, as good communication is an on-going process, not just two evenings a year. If you were unable to come in for an interview, please book one with me after school at your convenience. Just send a note in your child's agenda and we can figure out a good time for each of us. Thank you for being a partner in your child's learning!
Mrs. Jinks

Take- Home Reading Opportunities

Today our class began Raz-kids.com. Raz-kids is a terrific online reading program that allows your child to read "just right" books at their independent reading level. The program allows your child to listen to the book, to read and to record their reading for teacher review, and to take a brief comprehension quiz. I have placed each child in a level from A to E based on their Fall Reading Assessment results. Please let me know if your child is struggling in any way. If your child feels the books are too easy, encourage them to continue on, but they may access harder books through the bookroom option. The children last year loved to read on Raz-kids, especially since they earned star points to buy items in the Raz rocket store. The best part about this program is that you can access books at anytime in the day, at anyplace in the world through your laptop and you don't have to worry about lost or late books! For those that prefer the traditional Take-Home Reading Program, look for a post this week outlining what you can do to support your child at home.

To log on, go to raz-kids.com and type in 1jhughbeaton and press enter. There is no password needed, simply click on your child's name and you are ready! Enjoy!

Sight Word Day

Yesterday we had fun with sight words.  Each week we get a list of 5 words that we need to learn to be good readers and writers.  Usually Mrs. Jinks gets the words from our weekly shared reading poem or from words we use a lot in our writing, or from the Dolch high frequency word list.  We now have 30 words on our word wall, and we are practicing them each week at home and at school.  Today we changed our names and became a sight word for the day.  We all got a name tag with a sight word we have studied on it and we called each other by those new names only. Mrs. Jinks was Mrs. With, and Mr. Konrad, our Vice Principal was Mr. At.  It was a lot of fun and we were able to have lots of mini lessons on words.  We found words that were part of the same family, (e.g., me and see, by and my) and talked about how words may be spelled similarly, but sound differently(e.g., to and go).  We talked about words that have a magic e (e.g., like) and those that don't follow the regular rules and you just have to remember their spelling(e.g., you).  We learned a lot and had fun doing it!  We graphed whether people enjoyed having a new name at the end of the day and most people enjoyed the experience.  Those that didn't like it said they liked their name better, or didn't like the feel of the name tag on their clothes.  A wonderful way to review!