Let the second week begin!

I had a fantastic first week of school last week!  My class was so eager and interested in being back in the classroom, they were just wonderful to meet and teach!  I am really looking forward to what this school year will bring, because that was one of the best first weeks ever.

This year I'm running a class blog for my students and their parents -- I plan to update the blog a couple of times a week, once with a teacher message about what we're learning and with some updates for parents about upcoming dates or events, and then once with a post written with my students' input ("shared writing") using our Smart Board to project the blog and write a post together.  The blog is completely private, families have to login to view it, as I believe in privacy first when sharing about the classroom online.

I've had parents visit already -- the page views have gone crazy this weekend!  Despite only having seven families leave a comment on my welcome post, and three of those families comment again on the next post, the page views are at 258 views!  It was 43 the evening after I sent the logins home (Wednesday), so that's quite a nice jump this weekend.  I'm hopeful that families will appreciate the opportunity to interact with our classroom this way.

This week my goal is to make my way through senior kindergarten assessments, I'll need to get the students started on independent activities and then meet one on one as often as possible.  It's incredibly valuable to do these September assessments of things like letter identification, reading, and number sense because then I can better tailor my program to individual learning needs -- and I can begin to create some guided groups.  After I make my way through the kinder assessments, then I need to read one-on-one with my grade one students.  That will be my week three goal.

I had a nice surprise tonight, an email from the mother of a student I worked very hard with for the past few school years.  This year the child is at a new school in the gifted program, but his mother had asked for my email address last June.  I hadn't heard from the family in the summer, so tonight it was lovely to have a special letter about the first week of school from the student.  He was very important to me, and I hope he will be very successful at his new school.  Just a lovely treat to hear from the family, because we had worked so hard together on social-emotional support for their son.  There will be many students in the long career I have ahead of me, but already having such a significant impact reminds me of the rewarding aspect of this job.

On to week two of this new school year, looking forward to it!