Sen-SEUSS-tional!

 

Happy March!  We had a sen-SEUSS-tional week in kindergarten.  We started our week with a "Who Was Dr. Seuss?" Chalk Talk.   Then we read a lot of Dr. Seuss books!  They make us laugh.  The kids want to read his books again and again!   They are wonderful for rhyming, counting and learning about letters and words.  They are especially great for our amazing imaginations!

  Dr. Seuss was born on March 2, 1904.  His birthday is now Read Across America Day, a national campaign to promote reading.   So what better way to recognize this author/illustrator’s birthday than with a reading celebration all month long!  Hill will be giving special emphasis to activities that promote reading as a fun and enjoyable experience.  Please refer to your March is Reading Month packet for events throughout the month.

Science

This week we dove  right into learning about our new classroom visitors… fish & guppies.  Our week started by investigating and observing the parts of a goldfish & guppies like the scientist we are.   The children had so much fun learning how to take care of fish & guppies.   They were eager to share their own experiences about pet fish.  We read a lot of fiction and non-fiction class books.  We especially liked The Rainbow Fish and the message we learned from the book.  But we learned a lot of information from our non-fiction books too. The children also learned how fish travel together in schools when they acted this out in our classroom.  Then the little scientists compared goldfish to guppies and had great responses to share.


We also learned about snails. This was so exciting. First we observed and explored snails.  We observed how they live in shells and can stick to the side of the glass in the aquarium.  After further exploration, we learned that their body is referred to as a foot and that they have strong muscles that ripple through their foot to help them move.  We also learned that they glide by using a trail of mucous.  Ask your child about their experiences as a scientist!

Reading Workshop

Often when learning new words, children apply the strategy of using the beginning sound to help them identify the word. When they do this, they often guess a word that may not fit in the sentence, it starts with the same letter so they guess and move on without looking at the rest of the word. They may not even know there is an end to the word. To gain accuracy it is important that children

also learn to look at the end of the word when reading. Applying the reading strategy of using beginning and ending sounds helps with both accuracy and comprehension.  Please encourage your child to look at the entire word reading.

 

Writing Workshop

We are in a new unit of study called opinion writing.  In this unit we teach children how to channel their natural abilities of persuasion into letters.  We began by telling children that what they have to say is important and that people are interested in hearing other points of view. 

 

Students have been listening and forming opinions about books they have heard.  We are now writing our opinions in the format of a letter.  This unit becomes a foundation for teaching students that in real life and in various other writing forms, individuals make a claim and support it with evidence.