A week of thanks!

Writing Workshop

It was a week of “thanks” in kindergarten.  As a group, we wrote a thank you letter to Mr. Kevin for keeping our school so nice.  We wrote a thank you letter to our office staff for giving us ice and taking care of us when we get sick.  We also wrote to Mrs. Bussell for teaching us really fun games in gym!  The Kinder-Kids really did a nice job of recognizing all the components to letter writing.   During Writing Workshop we have been talking about quality work and trying our best. 

 

Social Studies

We have been discussing the topic of “Now and Then.”  We had quite a few interesting talks about life long ago and life now.  The kids made the CLAIM:  It’s good to be a kid in 2013!  Their EVIDENCE:  video games, stores to buy toys, T.V., Movies, ipads, etc.  It is on display in our hall.

 

 

Throughout the month of December, we will be “traveling” the world.  We will learn about the different holidays celebrated across the globe.  We would love for you to share your holiday with us.  Some ideas are to bring in a book to read or craft for the kids.  It is great to learn and share with each other!

Reading Workshop

I am so proud of all the kindergartners’ growth so far!  They have done a great job learning their letters and letter sounds.  In Reading Workshop we are working on our CAFÉ menu.  It is a collection of highly effective reading strategies that the students will be taught to use, to help them become better readers. They are organized into four goals:

• C is for Comprehension: “I understand what I read.”
• A is for Accuracy: “I can read the words.”
• F is for Fluency: “I can read smoothly, with expression.”
• É is for Expanding Vocabulary: “I know, find, and use interesting words.”

You will be getting more information on our reading strategies as we dig deeper into Reading Workshop!

During IDR time, I have been reading with individual kids or small groups.  I have been listening to your child read, and helping him/her pick a reading goal, and suggest a reading strategy that will help. Research shows that when students know exactly what they need to work on, and why, they are much more successful in meeting their goals!

Math

We used the strategy of CLAIM and EVIDENCE to help us with our shapes.  There has been some confusion over our shape characteristics, especially the hexagon, rectangle and square.

Music

I can’t tell you enough how much this group learns through music.  This is allowing me to build vocabulary, math & reading skills.  When you can already sing the words of a song you can confidently read the words to a song as you sing it!   Even in a very simple poem or song there are MANY opportunities to look for and learn about written text. For early readers just touching the words as they sing is wonderful reading practice. Kids who are ready for more can be thinking about word wall words, punctuation, spelling and developing fluency.  So we are going to keep singing away!

Just a few of our favorite songs are:

·         Learning Letter Sounds (letter and sound recognition)

·         All Together (alliteration)

·         Numeral Song  (Number Formation)

·         Macarena Math  (skip counting by 2’s, 5’s, 10’s)

Thankful…

During this month when we are all reflecting on what we are thankful for, I would like to give special thanks for all the wonderful children and parents this year.  I feel very fortunate to have such fantastic families to work with!

  
 

Turkey Tug of War!

Turkey Tug-of War

We completed another Visible Thinking routine this week.  We asked the question…Should we eat turkey on Thanksgiving?  The children took sides and debated.  During our turkey tug-of-war the children were…

1.      Presented with the dilemma.

2.     Asked to identify the factors that "pull" at each side of the dilemma. These are the two sides of the tug of war.

3.     Asked to think of "tugs", or reasons why they support a certain side of the dilemma.  They were also asked to try to think of reasons on the other side of the dilemma as well.

We displayed our Tom Turkeys that were created at home around our tug-of-war.  The kids LOVE to look at them!  They are fabulous!

 

 

We also created turkeys and then”Stepped Inside” a turkey’s life.  This visible thinking routine helps students to explore different perspectives and viewpoints as they try to imagine things, events, problems, or issues differently.  They are also on display.  There is a lot to check out when you come for conferences!

Writing Workshop

 We are wrapping our third writing unit called, ‘Label and List in a Content Area,’   The kids have been collecting, observing, and studying leaves, trees, weather, shells, & rocks.  It has fit in perfectly with our science unit on trees!  We have been working on slowing down their writing from whole stories to using letters and sounds to labeling items and writing sentences. This has enabled students to take their time and record not only the first sound but also every sound after that.  Finally, this unit is supporting the idea that writing, science and learning about things in their world is important.

 

Let’s Stop Those Germs!

(Tune: Mary had a little Lamb)

 

Mary had a little lamb,
She also had the flu.
And when she left her school,
The others had it too.
So anytime your child is sick,
Please keep her home with you.
Then the children in our school
Will be happier and healthier too!

 

Please remind your child to “catch their sneezes and coughs in their elbows.”  This will keep their hands clean and stop germs from being spread.  Now is a good time to review hand washing and remind your little one to keep his/her hands out of his/her mouth and nose. 

Math

We continue to work on numeracy.  The children are thinking symbolically by seeing numbers as quantities or measurements of real objects.  Their thinking amazed me this week!   They represented the number 10 with tally marks, 10 Frames, objects, number stories, addition and subtraction sentences and ones and tens.

 

 

Science

The Kinder-Kids finished our science theme on trees and leaves.  This week we focused on the different seasons.   Fortunately, through our weather and landscape changes, we have had an excellent example of changing seasons.

 We also started our wood and paper unit.    We transformed the shape of wood using sandpaper and created plywood from thin pieces of wood.  We observed different kinds of wood and communicated our observations.   We also observed how wood interacts with water.  We are super scientist!

 

 

This week Hill celebrated Red Ribbon Week.  It is a campaign designed to present a unified and visible community commitment toward the creation of a drug free America. 

     We talked about the dangers of drugs, tied a red ribbon on our backpacks and we all signed a pledge to make healthy choices and say no to drugs.

Wow!  The Nursery Rhyme Recital was fantastic!!!!!  We have quite a few performers in our room!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The kindergarten scientists are hard at work!

Science

The kindergarten scientists are hard at work!  What a great week learning about trees and leaves! The super scientists learned the parts of a tree and the function of each part.  They also learned why leaves change color in the autumn.  The class discovered that trees are very important.  They give us shade, clean air, paper, wood, and many other important things.  Trees also provide a home for many different animals. 

 

During the week we also read many books about trees, graphed leaves by color, and did leaf rubbings.   We also found symmetry in our leaves.  We will continue to study trees over the next few weeks.  

We loved meeting with our 3^rd buddies from Miss Mulligan’s class.  We worked together to create fall trees.  Fall is in the air! 

Up & Coming Science…

Our class is beginning a study of wood and paper.  We will be looking at the properties of wood and paper (texture, color, absorbency, flexiblility.etc.) and how different kinds of wood and paper are alike and different.   We will also investigate how wood and paper can be processed as we sand wood, make simulated plywood, paper mache and recycle paper. Then the kindergartners will use what they learned about the properties of materials to construct projects (weaving, taking apart boxes and making sculptures).

Reading Workshop

 

Independent Reading is the heart of the Reading Workshop. This is the time when students practice strategies modeled in our lesson.  It is also a time for students to make their own book choices, practice their reading stamina and have time to read and set independent reading goals.

As the children become more independent, IDR time will allow me to confer with students, teach guided reading lessons or have a small-group lesson on a specific strategy or skill

We are all at different developmental levels of reading.  During our IDR time, we have learned about reading books three different ways.

 

• Reading the words
• Reading the pictures 
• Retelling the story 

 During IDR time we love reading in our “Book Nooks.” Books Nooks are cozy spots to read in our room.  Ask your kindergartner where their cozy reading spot was this week. 


The kids are so excited to read!   As we were reading, one of our kindergartners said, “I want to read more!” ---music to a teacher’s ear!
  

Math

In math we are focusing on those “tricky teens.” (10-19). The Kinder-Kids learned that these numbers all have a 1 in front of them.  We have been learning that this 1 actually stands for “1 group of ten.”  Throughout our week we did many activities with our number cards.  On Tuesday each student was given a number card (O through 22) in which they had to recognize and then tell the class which number they had.  On Wednesday the kids had to put themselves in order from zero to twenty-two.  Not only was this an ordinal number exercise, but it also included the skills of teamwork and problem-solving.  On Thursday we took our numbers and made addition sentences together to see what number they equaled.   We are awesome kindergarten mathematicians!

Our Halloween party was a huge success!  The kids had a wonderful time.  Thanks so much to all who contributed to a great day!  We are going to have a lot of fun writing about our Halloween memories during writing workshop.