We had such a great Trimester 1 Celebration this morning! Each trimester at The Summit, classes invite their families to join us at school to celebrate their learning from that trimester. Today we invited first grade families to join us in the art room to see the first graders’ writing and art from a project they created as a reflection of our unit on protecting the environment.

First graders have recently been exploring the process of drafting, editing and publishing their writing. Students followed the steps of the writing process to create their writing about our prompt: “Earth is special to me because…,”. They started by brainstorming. They thought about what makes Earth special to them, like its animals, plants, water, and places. Then, they made a first draft, writing down their ideas and focusing on using phonetic spelling to write each sound in the word. Remember: phonetic spelling is developmentally appropriate for first graders as they are constantly learning new spelling patterns and high frequency words. After drafting, they revised their work, adding extra details to make their ideas clearer. Once their writing was complete, they worked with Ms. Ursino to check for capital letters, punctuation, spacing, and clarity. Finally, they made a final copy using their best handwriting. We have been working each day in class on D’Nealian handwriting and their letter formation is improving every day! This process helped them develop their ideas and feel proud of their finished writing pieces.

With help from our wonderful art teacher, Mrs. Dalton, first graders made art using recycled materials to create something useful. Using recycled materials helped them to reduce waste and give new life to the materials.

Great work, first graders! Thank you to all who joined us to celebrate the learning these wonderful students have done so far this year!