Greetings and
welcome to Room 72 for Grade 1. My name is Kim Cook and I am excited to
welcome your son/daughter to our grade 1 classroom. I was previously a grade 1
and 2 teacher at Colonel Walker School.
I am very excited about joining the Royal Oak school community and
getting to know you and your children. On
the first day of school the teachers will be outside to meet students on the
compound to direct them to the correct door and classroom.
Over the
summer I travelled to New Orleans with my family. We enjoyed exploring and learning about this
great city. I also spent time relaxing
and working on building an off grid cabin.
This has been a great experience for me in learning new skills.
Teaching your
child is a privilege that I take very seriously. I strive to provide a safe, loving and
personalized learning environment for each student in my classroom. We will work together in growing and
learning. Each day we will work as a
community to pursue our learning, develop problem-solving skills, and grow in
our ability to make decisions and be successful in meeting daily
challenges.
These first
weeks of school will be spent getting to know each other as individuals,
classmates and learners. As a group we will develop classroom guidelines that
help us understand how we will interact with others and with our environment.
In grade 1 we
work independently, in pairs, in small groups, and as a whole class. We use
manipulatives. We build things. We design things. We test our
ideas. We explain our thinking. We read stories. We share
orally. We tell our own stories. We
speak about our projects. We listen to one another. We take turns helping
out in the classroom. We have lots of fun learning while we work very hard!
Inspiring meaningful learning
For learning
to be personally relevant, connected and meaningful, grade 1 students are
encouraged to adopt a flexible mindset.
To bring to life cross curricular competencies such as problem solving,
creativity, and critical thinking and to support literacy and numeracy
development throughout student learning experiences, tasks are designed to
invite all students into a personal and collaborative inquiry. This approach allows each student to develop
attitudes, skills and knowledge that support the developmental growth of
competencies.
To spark inquiry,
grade 1 students are encouraged to ask I
wonder questions. Their wonderings inform the investigations
that follow and new understandings, meanings and knowledge are built and then
communicated with others.
Assessment is a continuous process
and pursued through a range of practices including: observation, anecdotal
records, portfolios, conversations, work samples and tests. Formative
assessment, assessment for learning, is part of the continuous
interaction between the student and the teacher and is designed to assist
students and teachers by checking learning to decide what to do next. It guides instruction and the development of
learning tasks.
Summative assessment, assessment of learning, is a comparison
at a particular moment in time between individual student achievement and the
learner outcomes of the Alberta Programs of Study and/or appropriate individual
program goals.
Students are expected to be engaged
in assessing their own learning process. They must be able to:
•
Gather evidence of their
learning: knowledge, skills and progress.
•
Understand their progress
in relation to learning outcomes
•
Reflect upon ways they learn
best and develop personal strategies
•
Make decisions about next
steps
•
Communicate with parents and teachers
on an ongoing basis.
Sincerely,
Kim Cook
