Whew!

First week of school has flown by and all I can do is...smile. :) It's been a great week and I wish I could share everything, but honestly, some of it was a blur. I will try to capture everything that I observed and noted to be important for the beginning days...

At the Open House, I asked parents to share their thoughts on these three questions:

1. School is important because... 2. A successful 5th grader looks like... 3. What will you do to support your child in becoming an independent learner?

This was important to me because I wanted to see and understand what my parents valued in their child's education. I also did this because I asked my students two of the same questions and wanted to compare their answers and see if there were any similarities. I hope to return to these anchor charts during intake conferences in September and really hone in on the third anchor chart with a follow-up question. :)

Here are the questions I asked students to answer in their first week of school:

1. School is important because... 2. A successful 5th grader looks like...

 3. What should students in our class be doing to make sure our class runs as smooth as possible? 4. What kind of teacher helps you learn best?

And it seemed like both sets of writers were very thoughtful in what they wrote. I was especially impressed by the reflection my students provided with the last anchor chart. They were able to communicate with me that they needed a teacher who was kind and had their best interest at heart, listening to their perspective. We also had to define what "kind" meant, because I wanted to make sure they knew that sometimes there are times when I am serious and then there are times when I am silly. All in all, it was great to read their thoughts on these phrases/questions.

Up next...our Marshmallow Challenge and other meaningful thinking that was done by our wonderful fifth graders!