On Monday, we welcome our cohorts to school as a unified class. Over the past six months, kindergartners in Cohorts A and B have learned about each other, shared their joys, and collaborated on projects through letters. To say that they are excited to greet each other in person on next week is an understatement. One student remarked today, “I can’t believe I’m going to meet my penpal for the very first time. I’m so excited like it’s Christmas!” What a year it’s been for these kiddos! The past two weeks have been remarkable as we’ve included our kindergartners in planning for our return to fully in-person learning for everyone; including some friends who’ve been fully remote since September. One of the first questions we revisited before we started was, “What does the word teamwork mean?” Here’s what kindergartners had to say…
“Teamwork is like when you’re on a soccer team and you have to work together to score goals against the other team’s goalkeeper. Oh yeah and you have to listen to the coach.”
“We do teamwork all the time when we talk about things together.”
“Teamwork means you work hard on your ideas. You have to share your ideas”
“You have to listen to your teammates ideas too, even if you don’t like it.”
“AND you have to be nice about it!”
“We help each other solve problems and find solvens (solutions) when we do teamwork.”
To culminate our discussion, we read A Little Spot of Teamwork. We pledged to follow the seven simple rules of the Teamwork Spots as we come together as a class. This read aloud provided the perfect follow-up for us. Kindergartners loved the candid examples and simple definitions of the challenging concepts we are trying to share with them everyday. Thank you Diane Alber.
