Living Together Differently

During the first week of school, I asked the kids - What does it mean to "live together differently?"  Some kids thought it referred to the fact that we're all different, yet we all have to get along.  Others thought it referred to the idea that our classroom would be a different place - a place where we would learn and live together in different ways.  They're both right.  In order to explore this idea more fully, we read picture books each day that spoke to this idea of "living together differently."  After sharing each book, we held a discussion and came up with several big ideas we learned.  We came up with nearly a hundred ideas, but the following video shares our top 24 ideas we learned about how we live together differently in Room 241...

Community Calendar

To create a strong community of learners, we must get to know each other. One way we do this is with our community calendar. Each day, a student has a "piece" of the calendar. The student writes and draws something about him or herself. The student then shares his or her calendar piece with the class to begin our class meeting. Here is a picture of our completed November calendar. I always love the variety of colors and ideas that make up our calendar by the end of the month.