Day One Success!?

Well, as I reflect on the first day of class, and I try desperately to catch some breath following the sprint of the past 15 hours (three little children under the age of 6 makes before and after school as much work as during the day...probably more really!), I feel I should take a moment and share some of our adventures with you....
The introductions started in the schoolyard, and continued during our first carpet session in class.  We have a great looking group of learners in Room 211 this year, and it quickly became apparent that they were both able to take things seriously, and to get a bit silly when asked to.  This bodes well for the months ahead.
After some intros, and a stint with Shellie Matthews, the class' French teacher for the year, we spent a lot of time settling into the class, sharing some about ourselves, and sharing some hopes for the classroom atmosphere for the coming months.  We were able to look for some inspiring words, and ideas to help give us inspiration for the days to come.  One video we looked at is below, and we used it to spark some discussion about main ideas, and how to support them.  Students watched most of the quick video, and then stated what they think the main idea of this video is, or why I chose to share it with them.  It started slow, with one student saying that the basic idea is that failure leads to success, and evidence from the video was used to support this idea.  Then slowly hands went up.  Another student said that the idea was that failure might make some people give up, but if you want to really get anywhere in life, you need to keep trying, that will guarantee success in the long run.  A few students worked out the idea that you should never quit...and soon ideas were flowing from all parts of the room.
We finished off by looking for other words and ideas of inspiration.  Students helped us get the Chromebooks dusted off after a long summer, and everyone was able to log in to do a quick google search, and collect their own inspiring words to be used tomorrow.  Overall the day flew by.  I know it is the honeymoon period, but today was a pretty good start I would say.
Please check your child's bag for an endless collection of forms.  Two purple sheets are the newsletter from me (also posted on our blog www.alternativeschooladventure.blogspot.com), and two green sheets are the concussion and permission forms for our first class outing next week! (come on volunteers!).  Then there is a multi coloured package of forms from the office, a calendar, scholastics catalogues, and a chromebook agreement (white form).  The Chromebook form is a users agreement, being filled out by all students who will be using the Chromebooks this year.  It must be filled out before regular use of these can commence.  I will talk more about this in the class meeting (Sept 20, not 19 like printed in your newsletter before they changed dates!) but the Chromebooks will be used intermittently, for specific purposes, so don't worry about drastically increased screen time!
I think that is it.  Check out the video below.  I will try to share these whenever they are used in class, so you have talking points to share with your children.  Here we go for day 2!
Regards, Ray