1 Month Later...

Now that we have been in school for about a month, students have been learning lots of new things!  We have started our differentiated groups for phonics, literacy, and math.  We used pre-assessments to group the students into groups where they are learning exactly what they need!  The kiddos progress through the groups as they master the concepts in each group.  We change the groups as often as we need so that students are always learning what they need.  You can learn more about each of our groups by reading our K/1 Fusion Newsletter.

In literacy teams, some groups have really been focusing on putting letters together to build words.  We've been working on manipulating the letters to make new words.  We have also been spending time reading books at our level.  We've even read books aloud to other students!  Students have also been focusing on writing after reading.  We've been practicing using capital letters at the beginning of sentences and periods at the ends of sentences.

 In phonics teams, some students have been focusing on learning letters and the sounds they make.  We have done many activities and played many games while learning and working with these letters and their sounds!

In math teams, we have been working on counting, ordering, and comparing numbers.  We have played games and used the SmartBoard to learn.  Students have even become the teachers during math teams, showing other students what they know!

In our K/1 Fusion classrooms, students are in charge of their own learning.  Students do self-assessments to track and reflect on their learning.  After taking any formative assessments (for learning) or self-assessments, students use devices to upload their assessments to their Google Drive accounts.  Parents can easily log into their child's Drive account to look at their child's progress!  

We use technology a lot at Conesville.  A couple weeks ago, 4th grade went to the fairgrounds for Ag Day.  While there, Mrs. Bigrigg did a Google Hangout with us so we were able to see and learn the same things 4th grade was learning without even being there!  It was super cool!

It has been an exciting time in our K/1 Fusion Classrooms so far!

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What Fusion is all about!

Our school year is off to a good start! This summer was filled with lots of preparations - not only for planning for Fusion, but also new classrooms. Let me restate that, new-to-us classrooms! Two of us Fusion teachers (Miss Wright and myself) moved into new classrooms. I went from the largest classroom in the building, equipped with a bathroom, sink, and lots of storage to a much smaller classroom with limited storage. (Yes, I had to downsize tremendously! We opened up a new preschool at our building, and it is only logical for preschool to have a bathroom.) Our third teacher is a first year teacher, so she too was starting fresh. Here is a pic of the front of my room. I have since put up burlap to cover the top of my 100s chart. We will post more pics of classrooms soon. 

As many of our colleagues all around, we are in the middle of conducting our beginning of the year assessments (determining where we are, SLOs, KRA, and STAR Testing). Although, these items seem tedious, they are SO valuable! Data drives our instruction! Without Data, we would just be blowing in the wind!