Week 6 - Safe Pockets

This week in first grade we started to learn about 5 life skills that keep us and everyone around us safe:

This week we talked about being helpful, careful, patient, and responsible. Next week we will talk about the last skill: being respectful. 

Every day we look for students displaying these 5 skills and make it the basis of conversations we have about keeping ourselves and others safe. When a student cannot make appropriate choices, then their kangaroo will leave their safe pocket and go into mine. It stays there until I see that child making the right choices.

For example, I might see a child grab a paper from another child’s hand. “Riley, is that polite or rude? Grabbing another person’s work is disrespectful. Jamie has worked hard on that paper. Move your kangaroo into my Safe Pocket.”

After the student moves their kangaroo, I require a right act. I acknowledge the right choice and the kangaroo goes back into their safe pocket quickly.

The Safe Pocket is based on teaching children new life skills and gives new chances in every moment to self-­correct. 

Home Connections:

Being Helpful

My words and actions help not hurt others. Our Question: Are you being helpful or hurtful?

Family Mission:
Discuss the importance as a family to be helpful to one another. “Catch” your child being helpful in words or actions.

Being Careful

I treat friends and things in a gentle way. Are you being gentle or rough?

Family Mission:
Discuss the importance of being careful with your belongings and your family members.

“Catch” your child being careful with household belongings and their toys.

Being Responsible

I do the right thing and can be trusted to do what needs to be done.

Our question: Are you being trustworthy or careless?

Family mission: 

Discuss the importance of being trustworthy and doing what needs to be done even if no one is looking or telling you to. For example, bringing dishes to the kitchen when they are finished eating or picking up something they see on the floor and putting it away instead of walking past or stepping on it.

Alternative: Give your child a "job" to do at home each day and track/reward them for doing their job!

Continuing our unit on Who We Are, the students tried out what it might be like to lose one of their senses. We also started to put everything together by asking ourselves What [have we learned?]? So what [seems important here]? Now what [should we do with what we've learned]?

In language, we have been building our knowledge of spelling through Word Sorts at our just right level. In readers workshop we are learning different ways to partner read. In Writer's Workshop, we are starting to practice taking a big watermelon idea and turning it into a seed idea. 

In maths, we are practicing:

• solving addition story problems with sums to 20 with situations of adding to and putting together, with unknowns in all positions
• using strategies to add with sums to 20
• solve for the unknown in an addition equation involving 3 whole numbers
• modeling with mathematics
• using appropriate tools strategically

Wishing everyone a lovely weekend!