This school year started off with a great first day! The kids were so excited to get back into school, see friends, and begin the “routines” they are familiar with.

On the first day of school I have a tradition of reading the book Swimmy by Leo Lionni. This little black fish has a brilliant idea to teach the little red fish to swim together in the shape of a large fish so they can go exploring through the ocean rather than just hide among the rocks, fearful of large fish.  This year third grade has a hallway bulletin board that features fish decorated by each student and teacher.  It says “We all swim together in third grade.”  Just like Swimmy, I hope our class learns to work together to accomplish many exciting things this year as we swim together in our “school”.

    

Today we did a scavenger hunt in the classroom. Students got to move around the room to find and count objects in our room and get to know this space we will work in each day this year.

    

We talked about behavior expectations in the classroom and different areas of the school. We will continue more of these discussions and practice over the next two weeks.

We spent some time logging into our computers with new sign-in cards and learning how to navigate the new Gateway we will use for learning this year.

It was so nice to meet everyone today and begin our year together!