Building Community

I wanted to share a few photos of our week. The first six weeks of school are critical for building community and setting up routines. One of the lessons we did this week was about Peacemakers and Peacebreakers. We read No David and The Recess Queen and generated a list of what peacemakers do and what peacebreakers do. The lesson was inspired by Cara's lesson at The First Grade Parade.

We completed a follow-up lesson about how the words we say can hurt another. We read Big Al. It is about a large, scary fish that has no friends. He is the nicest fish in the ocean, but the others will not be his friend because of the way he looks.

Students were then introduced to "Sam." He is not well liked by his peers. We thought of some words that might be said to Sam that would hurt his feelings. Each time, we crumbled a piece of Sam. After awhile, we discussed what Sam looked like all crumbled and how we thought he felt.

Then, we began to give Sam compliments. For every compliment, we smoothed out a section of Sam. However, we just could not get all the wrinkles out. We can really hang onto hurt words. The lesson is from Anna at Crazy for First Grade.

We finished up the week by interviewing a new friend in class.

We will continue to build our community in Morning Meeting. Next week, students will learn how Room 105 C.A.R.E.S.