Today was a little crazy at school! More like a lot of craziness! Here in New York the students are allowed to dress up all day at school. This makes for an interesting day. You have to worry about all the accessories that go along with it as well as the questions of when is the party and when is the parade. This afternoon from 1-3 the students celebrated by having a parade. We walked through the halls and out onto the street and into Central Park. Literally they stopped traffic for us that is how big of a deal it is. The parents lined the streets with their iphones to take pictures and make sure their children had all the final touches of their costumes. It was so great to see how involved the parents are at the school. Even when we were out at the parade some parent volunteers were helping set up the classroom for the party. I could not believe how great the classroom looked and all because of the parent involvement. At other schools I have been to it is never this much. Usually you get the handful of dedicated moms and dads but not here. The parents got off of work to come see the kids. It makes me think about this as a question to ask during an interview about parent involvement.
The rest of the day we worked on writing more poems. Today it was time to work on their Halloween poems. It was a perfect day to do so. The students used spooky sayings and I couldn't believe how detailed they were. One of my favorites was Halloween sounds like the ghosts pumping blood from the zombies juicy brains. This is first grade remind you. We will be focusing on poetry for awhile considering this is the unit of inquiry at the time.
Also after school we experienced our first faculty meeting. It was really nice to be apart of and see how things tick. To start it out we had a chance to talk with our grade levels and work on what the plan is for common assessment. It was interesting to hear the perspectives from the other first grade teachers because they don't always do the same thing. We also worked with all the specialist areas to see how we can relate our units of inquiry to something in P.E. , music, art, foreign languages, library and technology time. This should be done wherever you go but that isn't always the case. Here at Dwight this is always apart of the system. It made so much sense when they were going through what they have planned and everyone was sharing their opinions. We even had a chance to talk with the grade above us and for some of the others the grade below them. We talked about what things we really need to stress to the students in first grade that will make things easier in second grade. Luckily it wasn't a lot because the second grade teachers said they were already doing a good job.
So far it has been a great day back at the school and I am hoping the kids will be settled down by tomorrow and are off the sugar high.
Tonight we are going to a Halloween parade that supposedly is the thing to do here. Thousands of people attend and where costumes too. It should be a fun night.
-Heidi
(I will post pictures as soon as I can)
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