The First Week of School: Learnings from Pete the Cat

Pete the Cat, our class mascot, welcomed 24 students to Room 303.  Pete has his own story that we all enjoyed the first day of school.  Pete teaches us a lesson - the importance of  having a positive attitude in the face of small challenges and disappointments. Pete keeps going along singing his song and reminds us, "It's all good!"  With Pete's wisdom at hand we have been working on creating a classroom community that will inspire us to learn and collaborate with each other.

We spent the week talking about learning, having good habits to help us learn, what it means to be smart, the importance of respect and collaboration/cooperation. This year we will be working on becoming more responsible about our learning and behavior.  The theme of the year will be the Freedom to Learn. During week 2 we will be working on the agreements to make it all work.

Freedom to Learn

In this classroom you are given as much freedom as possible to make your own decisions about your learning.

Freedom comes from taking responsibility for your own learning and behavior.

There are basically 3 Rules:

1.            Everyone will be respectful at all times.

2.          The Classroom is a place for learning.

3.          Our core values extend outside the classroom.

As a class we need to develop procedures/ritual to make the rules work.  They will become our working agreements. 

In the next couple of weeks the students will be keeping up with the blog telling you about what we are learning and doing.  Look for student work, photos, and words of wisdom.