First Day of 3rd Grade!

We had a terrific first day of third grade today! I was excited to be greeted by so many smiling students who were eager to be back at school. We have a wonderful class and I know that we have an amazing year ahead of us. 

After reading the first chapter of the book Stuart Goes to School, the students shared how they were feeling this morning while anticipating the start of their first day of school. Each child drew a face on a post-it that represented their feelings. These faces were then used to create a pictograph that helped us compare feelings across the class and to those of the characters in the book. Here is a photo of our graph. Even though there were a few students that were nervous about school starting or upset with summer ending, I was pleased to see plenty of smiling and happy children throughout the day! 

The students had an opportunity today to share some of their ideas and goals for third grade. I posed the following questions to the class and each child provided ideas and answers that we later discussed. I am amazed at the sophisticated ideas that were brought up!

     

     

Teams of students then discussed strategies that we should use to help promote learning in our classroom. We combined ideas and came up with the following list of Class Strategies.

Finally, the students learned an important and unique life lesson today: When we speak to one another it is like squirting toothpaste on a plate.

If we are not careful with our toothpaste and squeeze it without thinking we can end up with a big mess. This is also true with our words. If we open our mouths and speak words that are hurtful, disrespectful, or mean, it can make a huge mess. Several students volunteered to squirt out some toothpaste on a plate, but discovered that it was impossible when I asked a child to put the toothpaste back in the tube. She did manage to smear the toothpaste around and make an even bigger mess though! It is just as difficult to put words back in our mouths. Even if we apologize or try to explain that it was a joke, it is impossible to take back those hurtful words. The students were really able to understand the comparison and agreed to think carefully about the words they are choosing to use. 

Thanks for taking time to learn about our busy first day of third grade! I look forward to seeing all of the parents at Curriculum Night next week!