"Ms. Carlberg, we don't have to do this anymore it's wayyyy too easy!"

It's always an exciting day when you hear your students not only say that they know how to do something, but then actually know how to do it! We celebrated multiple successes in our room today:

1. Our Read Well time is now running like a well-oiled machine and it is producing growing readers! It has taken this long for our students to learn and follow through with all of the different routines of our reading time. Now that these are in place, every student is making progress! 
2. Every student in our class can now put together numbers to make ten! Not only can they put numbers together, but they can explain how they did it. Being able to explain your thinking takes a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of the topic. This skill is going to make learning other new concepts easier. I am so proud of our hard work. 
3. We used self-control throughout our day and were even role models to other students! We are working on sitting silently in the hallway during our bathroom breaks. Today another teacher complimented us and commented on how we are great role models! WOOO HOO!

On top of celebrating today, we started two new things in math. First, we started working in our math journals with our math partners. Each student has a partner that they play games and work with during math time. Today I told the students which math journal page they were to work on, but did not explain any of the problems-they had to work together to read what to do and then do it. The cooperation that was happening in our room was astounding! We had students not only working together but also teaching each other, sharing ideas of how to solve the problems, and celebrating and laughing together! If you would have been there, you might have gotten a little misty eyed like myself. We also started using our math notebooks today by gluing in a story problem. Eventually, we will have new story problems to put in our math notebook every week but we're starting small with one. Today we only learned how to tell if the problem is using addition or subtraction. We learn one tiny piece of problem solving each day. This is not only fun for the students, but it also allows me to change the problem slightly to make it harder or easier for the students, depending on what they need.

We ended our day with Mrs. Cheuk returning to us! (The first grade teachers all spent the afternoon discussing how we can switch some students around during math to better accommodate their needs.) Mrs. Cheuk worked with us to learn more about balance during science and then helped us earn the privilege of free choice. It was great to see her again!



Books We Read Today:

Llama Llama Red Pajama - Anna Dewdney



Interesting Tidbits From Our Day:

"I noticed that you're in my square. Could you please move into your own square?" (WOO! Learning how to ask and speak kindly to your friends is something we work on every day!)

"Ms. Carlberg can I come over for dinner?"