Building community

We start each morning with morning meeting.  We do a greeting, share,  an activity and finally read a message about the day.  We sit in a circle for the greeting and share.  Below are photographs of one of the activities.  This activity is called the class web.  We create a class web and a gentle spider climbs over the web.   Anant was the special helper and choosing everyone for the game.

The children earn class stars when they do something well, or they are kind, or help each other.  When they get 15 stars they choose a class party.  For example, in the past they have liked to dress up for a pyjama party and bring a treat to share.   Keep an eye out for our first class party!

We are choosing our own classroom agreements or class rules.  We decide them together and choose what is important.  We have the class rules on a star below our golden rule.

The children worked together putting their ideas on post-it notes for suggestions for rules for our class community.  Then we choose the 7 most important ones.  In the groups the children decorated these. 

We are learning to help each other and our class.  We have a list of jobs to help.  At present we only have one job, the special helper.  We will keep adding classroom duties such as morning meeting leader, prayer reader, cubby checker etc.  Each child will have a turn doing all these jobs.

We are learning how to be independent.  We teach the children to try and stop and think.  Look at others, or ask 3 children before asking me.  This helps the child gain some independence and have some strategies if they do not know what to do next.  This also helps preventing 20 children following me around the class asking the same questions!

We are learning how to sit on the carpet and listen.  I try and keep listening time age-appropriate.  We have a short mini-lesson and a longer time for learning.

We are learning about different voice level volumes.  We are learning about what level of voice works in our classroom at different times of the day.

We have enjoyed celebrating Issy and Vir's birthdays this week.  The parents have kindly bought cupcakes for the children.

We are enjoying learning about each other and learning how to learn and have fun in classroom community.