First graders grow enormously throughout the academic year. My students made incredible progress academically,\u00a0as well as socially.<\/p>\n
Become Independent Learners<\/strong><\/p>\n It was amazing to see my student\u2019s stamina grow as they became more confident, and in turn, more independent. In the beginning they often needed me or Jocelyn nearby to continue writing or persevere in their math work. In writer\u2019s workshop students built their stamina to where they could write for 30 minutes independently. During Daily 5, students practiced sustained silent reading, and rotated through centers while teachers pulled small groups. By the end of the year students took ownership of their classroom and the learning that needed to be done. They became confident learners, ready for their next challenge.<\/p>\n Work Together Collaboratively<\/strong><\/p>\n Students worked together throughout the day. All morning students worked in small groups during Daily 5, and then again during\u00a0Response to Intervention.\u00a0During the afternoon we often had math centers, science with partners, and of course whole group instruction. We also taught students \u201caccountable talk,\u201d a variety of academic conversational sentence starters (\u201cI agree\/disagree with___ because\u2026 or in my opinion\u2026\u201d The variety of group work helped our students practice share ideas and materials, compromise, and being respectful. These are all skills that are not only essential in the\u00a0classroom, but in our every day lives as well.<\/p>\n Solve Problems Pro-actively<\/strong><\/p>\n First grade students move from relying on a grown-up to solve their problem, to standing up for themselves. While we adults are of course there to help if needed, students were also taught to stand up for themselves and share their feelings. \u00a0Students learned the difference between tattling or \u201ctelling,\u201d and when it is appropriate to get a teacher.\u00a0We\u00a0focused on teaching students to be assertive and express themselves when something was not right.<\/p>\n Grow as readers, writers, mathematicians, scientists, and historians<\/strong><\/p>\n The growth of our class academically is undeniable. Most students began the year reading at levels A-D, and are now reading H-J. It was wonderful to see how much students could learn each week through guided reading groups and explicit phonics instruction to help master specific skills. In math, students learned to count and understand number values, as well as addition, subtraction, and other key foundational skills.\u00a0On the tens and ones math pre-assessment, students were asked to show 90 in tens, and every student drew 90 dots. The post-assessment showed all students drawing tens, and breezing through the test. Their growth in these new concepts was so glaring, as this was so new for many of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" First graders grow enormously throughout the academic year. My students made incredible progress academically,\u00a0as well as socially. Become Independent Learners It was amazing to see my student\u2019s stamina grow as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"parent":591,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-596","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mat16-shazelkorn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mat16-shazelkorn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mat16-shazelkorn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mat16-shazelkorn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mat16-shazelkorn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mat16-shazelkorn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/596\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mat16-shazelkorn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mat16-shazelkorn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}