The students were very hard workers again today. We did our morning calendar and then transitioned into reading. We warmed up with the song, "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes." Then we worked on describing things we see using complete sentences. "I see....(a desk, a table, a frog, etc)." We practiced blending syllables to say words, and worked on counting the number of syllables we hear in words (car-toon (2), pre-sent (2), a-ma-zing (3). They are doing excellent at this. The letters r and s were revisited. The students listened to me say a word, then had to decide and then write on their whiteboard what letter that word started with. We are getting pretty quick with r and s words. To reinforce our learning of the letter r and the word a (still tricky to understand that this is not only a letter but also a word), the students drew and labeled a picture of either a rainbow, a racoon, or a rabbit. While our reading was taking place, the substitute para that was in the room today pulled students aside to do a painting project.
Working one on one with students; establishing that each word holds meaning by making sure to point to every word on a page. Today I introduced station work to the students. I gave the boys and girls 4 tasks they needed to complete while I worked one-on-one with each student. The students did a great job independently working! One task had them highlighting all the 'r' words in a book, coloring it, then finding 3 students to read to and getting their signatures. I couldn't believe how well this went! I have some very smart kindergarteners :)
Students taking turns reading to each other
I promise I will not be feeding your children sweets on a daily basis (especially right before they come home ;) , but I brought in birthday treats today. I had the students guess how old they thought I was. Their first two guesses were 100 and 5. When they figured it out they we're shocked I was the oldest one in the room. I'll take that as a compliment and not that I need to act more my age :) :)
Looking forward to tomorrow!
We had a fantastic day today! We started off with our benchmark testing. The boys and girls did a much better job today following directions. We breezed through it, and now the reading portion is done! The kindergarteners got a Hershey kiss from me for doing such a wonderful job :)
We started our reading practicing listening for syllables we hear in words. The students are catching on really quick! We then practiced listening for the letter r in words. I held up a picture of an object and the students had to stand up if it began with r, or sit on their hands if it started with another letter. Then we read the book "A Farm," with a partner sitting elbow elbow knee knee. We talked about how in kindergarten, it is important to point to each word as we read it (to make sure they are reading each word, and learning that words hold meaning). The students had trouble with this last week, so I gave them each a 'magic eye' to help them. This seemed to do the trick :)
We did a quick math lesson, talking about the words cone, cylinder, and circle. We discussed how they are the same, and how they are different. We then contrasted a circle to a square.
The boys and girls were such good listeners today that we had time for an art project at the end of the day. We made owls using construction paper and cupcake wrappers. They seemed to really enjoy this activity. Also, no one moved their clothes pin today so they earned another brownie point. We're half way to getting an extra 'fun day,' or mini "class party!"
Note: Please return the picture forms by Friday, as that is picture day! Also, if you do decide to order books from this book order (they will be getting one every other week or so, so don't feel like you need to this week or ever for that matter) and are adventurous with the computer, I believe that you get an incentive for ordering directly online. You still enter our class code so I get credit and can order classbooks :) Otherwise, checks are good too.
Last book order I as able to order 6 free books, which is very exciting for a new teacher :)
Today we did some more benchmark testing. The material is pretty difficult, because much of it is learned throughout the year and has not yet been introduced. The students did a great job focusing and following directions! Hopefully we can get it finished up tomorrow :)
In reading, the word syllable was introduced. We talked about how words are like puzzles, made up of different parts. I said a word, and the students clapped out its syllables (i.e cupcake. cup....cake. cupcake). They did a great job listening and clapping. The letter R was introduced. Students came up to the smartboard and helped me practice writing a lower case and uppercase r. Then we did an activity where they got another chance to practice their r's and also pick out words that start with r. The words differ, stalking, and mellow were briefly introduced for our weekly robust vocabulary. Then we touched on the word label, and when and where we use labels (on our notebooks, on our desks, to describe a drawing).
We took a quick brain break and then went right into math. The book Anno's Counting Book was revisited, in order to establish links between math and the real world. We also talked about how we will now be focusing on numbers 6-10. We used our counting mats to build concepts of these numbers, and then brought out our graphs to compare.
The kids were quite tired after all this thinking, so we ate a quick snack and listened to a story. Then it was time to head home.
Today we jumped right into our language arts in order to have time at the end of the morning for fun friday. We worked on discriminating between M and S. I said a word and the students had to decide if it started with m or s. After that, they had to decide if the word I said ended with m or s. They came up to the smartboard and moved that word into the appropriate category. Then, we worked on reading simple words. The students were introduced to reading with a partner in the position elbow elbow knee knee. They took turns reading the book I Can. They did a wonderful job for their "first" book. We reviewed our robust vocabulary words and gave examples of what they mean (ability, confident, complained, reverse, talent, and encourage).
Students reading elbow elbow knee knee
After reading we took a quick brain break and moved and danced to the song "Going on a Bear Hunt." Then we continued with math. Today we worked on understanding concepts of alike and different. I held up two shapes and the boys and girls told me if they were the same ("Why? How do you know?"). We talked about which objects belong, and what that means. The words first, second, and third were introduced. The students then did an activity picking out alike or same objects.
This week was homecoming week and all the kindergarten students painted a hand print onto a banner. We marched into the gym with our banner, showing that we are class of 2025. The cheerleaders came around to each grade level and did a cheer for them. Then the high school students had their homecoming coronation, and we cheered them on from the bleachers.
We finished our fun friday by having choice time in the classroom. The students had 5 different stations they could pick from to rotate among. One station the children really enjoyed was creating things out of scrap paper.
What a great morning! Enjoy the weekend :)
I'm really proud of how hard the kindergarteners worked with our academically packed day. Once the children had done their morning routine, we had just started math when it was time to head to the computer room for some more MAP testing. As they trickled back into the room, Mrs. Mary read them two fall stories as I pulled the boys and girls aside to work on our benchmark test. Then we got back into math. The word "graph" was introduced to the students, and we learned how to organize horizontal and vertical graphs. This was some pretty deep thinking for us, and the boys and girls did a wonderful job!
We took a quick brain break and sang and danced to the song, "Going on a Bear Hunt!" Then we dove into reading. We worked on identifying sound position for the letter S. The boys and girls listened to a word I said, then stretched it out to decide if the s was at the beginning or end of the word (i.e Soup--"Ssssssooooouuuupppp....Beginning!") They then did an activity where they practiced tracing S's and then coloring according toif it was an uppercase S or a lower case s. The picture revealed a snail.
Identifying if the S was heard at beginning or end
We gathered on the carpet for the last 10 minutes and chatted about our fun friday events. The students also earned a brownie point because nobody had to move their clothespin down to a foul! If we fill the brownie tray we get another fun day during the week, so the kids are trying really hard.
The students have really earned their fun friday tomorrow! I can't wait to enjoy all their hard work with them!
We started out our day today with Mrs. Mary reading a story to the boys an girls. Mrs. Mary is a para who comes into our room everyday from about 8:30-9:45, to help me prepare materials and to help students while I am working individually with others (today I was pulling children aside to do a beginning of the year assessment).
We reviewed the letter M and the word "I," and then the letter S was introduced. The students used their white boards to practice forming the s. We then did a writing activity practicing our s's as well as m's. Along with this, the students had a worksheet with lots of items on it and they had to only color the ones that started with m! This revealed a 'hidden picture,' which turned out to be the letter m :)
In math we talked about the scenes of '4' we drew (everything they drew had to be drawn 4 times!). We then learned how to write the number 1 (straight line down!) and two (half a heart and straight line across). We talked about how numbers are written starting at the top, just like letters.
We ended the day by doing an activity called "Erase-a-Rhyme." I read a short poem and students help me finish each line of the poem by filling in the rhyming word. As we do this, I draw a picture or the students help me erase a picture according to the poem (i.e. "This poem is going to be a lot of fun, but first we must erase the___("sun!")
You may be noticing some fun 'coloring pages' coming home. This week these, along with reading quietly on the carpet, have been an option for students when they have finished all their work. :)
What a busy day! After the students came in, checked folders for notes, put their chair down, and did smartboard attendance (all independent now!), I had my teacher assistant for the week come up and run our calendar. We talk about what day of the week it is, what day it was yesterday, and what day it will be tomorrow. We talk about what month we're in and what the weather is like. Everyone will get a chance to be the teacher assistant, along with our other class jobs such as sanitary patrol (they clean tables at end of day with wipes), line leader, paper passer, electrician, custodian (throws away trash from table trash buckets) and librarian.
During language arts we learned the poem "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt," and talked about how many names we have. We practiced introducing ourselves saying, "Hello, my name is_____."
We reviewed the letter M, and listened for m at the beginning and ending of words. This was tricky!! We had to really stretch out the word and listen closely. The students did an activity with this, cutting out and gluing an m to the beginning box, or the ending box depending where they heard m.
In math we continued to work to build concepts of the numbers 1-5. We used our math trays and worked on showing a given number with math tiles. The boys and girls worked to build language by describing to the class how they had arranged their tiles; in a line, in a square, red-blue-red, next to or beside the number.
We read the book The Hungry Caterpillar, and counted as the caterpillar ate through a variety of foods.
The students did some MAP testing in the computer lab. When asked at the end of the day what their favorite part of tuesday was, they all replied "Computers!!!" If computers = testing, then I really do have a rare and wonderful group of kiddos :)
Today we started our Language Arts curriculum. This consists of daily lessons involving phonemic awareness, phonics, high-frequency words, reading, literature, comprehension, robust vocabulary, and writing. We worked on following one-step directions playing the game "Simon Says." The boys and girls are still working on listening for when simon doesn't say! We then worked on word segmentation/dividing spoken sentences into individual words. The students had to listen to what I spoke, and decide if it was a sentence or a word. If it was a sentence, we worked on breaking it down into individual words (i.e. Raise your hand. Raise....your.....hand). We clapped for each word to help us better understand how to divide the sentence into words.
We then worked on recognizing the letter M. In our curriculum, we start with letters that are easiest for students to say. The students had to identify uppercase and lower case m's and then practice writing them using their white boards. After that, we learned our first high frequency word: I. Students practiced using it in a sentence. We did two activities to reinforce our learning of M and I. We finished out our language arts by reading Eric Carle's book From Head to Toe, talking about the words prediction and author as well as our robust vocabulary ability, confident, and reverse.
We flew through math working on visualizing a given number of objects and then did an activity drawing 5 hats, 3 cats, 4 stars, and 2 cars.
Tomorrow is some testing on the computers as well as in the classroom.
What a packed Monday we had!
Today everyone was excited because it was our first fun Friday! But before we could get to the 'fun stuff,' we had to do our usual, still fun :) routine. After calendar we continued to work on developing our language to discuss number and number relationships. The words trapezoid and hexagon were introduced, and the students used these shapes to represent numbers 1-5. We then continued working on our counting books, this time making scenes of 3.
The students listened as I read the book, Why Leaf's Change Colors. We then made our own fall trees!
After our craft time we got to spend some time out on the playground enjoying the warm weather. The students loved going outside, our first chance this year! Fun Friday is definitely something we will all look forward to every week.
Have a wonderful weekend!
After the students arrived, checked folders for notes, put down their chairs, did their attendance and found a spot on the carpet, we warmed up with a few songs. Of course "Freeze Dance" was requested. We also learned the song "Song Shut Them." This song helps get the students calm and quiet before we go on with our calendar, which is led by a student 'teacher assistant' that changes each week.
We did our math warm up with the number parade. We also have been using the smartboard to count to our targeted number, which is the number of days we have been in school; 6.
Some students got to share the scenes they worked on yesterday. We talked about how we will continue making scenes so we can make our own Anno's Counting Book. We then repeated the math lesson from tuesday, working on visualizing numbers and forming them in different ways. We finished our math work with learning the rhyme "One-Two-Buckle-My-Shoe!" ...seeing where else we use numbers in our lives.
We took our last class bathroom break. Now that the boys and girls are getting used to their surroundings they will be venturing to the bathroom with a buddy when needed :)
We are working on our own class, "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" book. The students colored the page with their picture on it. I hope to make it a traveling class book, taking turns sending it home with each student.
We wrapped up our day by finishing odds and ends in order for all the students to get to take part in Fun Friday tomorrow. The Kindergarteners worked on unfinished work and if they finished, they did a cutting, gluing, and counting activity.
We did a quick smartboard counting lesson and then started the book "Daisy Head Mayzie." Before we knew it, it was goodbye time!
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