Gym Class!

During gym class today, we played a game called "Muncher Tag". The students were split into two groups, kids with noodles and kids without noodles. If you had a noodle you were "it" and you were on the lookout for someone without a noodle. If you found someone without a noodle, you took your noodle and munched them with it and after three munches you drop the noodle and they are "it". There are several bases skattered around the gym. These bases are discs with numbers written on them. They are only allowed to stay on the base for the number of seconds that are written on the disc. Not only was this game fun to watch and play, but they were practicing recognizing and counting numbers at the same time!

Weekly Poem 10/7

Below is video of the students performing our poem "Higglety Pigglety Pop" this week!

You Can "Count" on Me!

With report card testing starting this past week, I introduced an interactive counting board/chart. I test students each nine weeks on counting. The first nine weeks they are to count to 25, second nine weeks 50, third 75 and by the end of the year they should be able to count to 100. To encourage the students to continue practice counting I created this board in our room. Each student has his/her own person with a picture of them on it. We put the person under the number where they finished counting. As they practice counting and improve on how high they can count, we will move the person to the next goal. Once they reach the "100" mark, they receive a Match Magician certificate for achieving the goal of counting to 100!

 

Check In on Daily 5!

It's really not a secret how much I love using Daily 5 in my classroom. It's also not a secret how much people love Friday's! I thought I would post a video today that showed the students continuing to stay focused during their Daily 5 choices, even on a Friday morning! In years past, Fridays were always the days when kindergarteners needed a change of pace, they needed something different to keep them focused and on task. Ever since we have started Daily 5, the students continue to show stamina and hold their attention during their choices. I am amazed as a teacher how fast they are growing into readers with this being only the 8th week of school!

Book Shopping!

Who doesn't love to go shopping? Especially for new books! I love getting the opportunity to go shopping and I get even more excited when I buy a new book to read. In our class, each child has a special day of the week picked just for them to go "shopping" in our class book store. The kids are given a time slot each morning before announcements where they get to shop for a new book or two for their book boxes. When it is their day, they first go to their book box and pick out a book they are finished reading and ready to exchange. They decide which basket their book would fit the best into. If they are having a hard time deciding which basket to put the book in, they ask three of their friends in class for help before coming to ask me. Once they found the best fit for their book, it's their turn to shop for a new one! They are allowed to look through each basket until they find a book that fits their needs the best. Right now, most of the students are looking for books that interest them. Later on the in year, I will have a section of books seperated by reading levels and the students will be encouraged to shop for specific books in their reading level. Once they have found their new book, they will put it in their book box to keep it safe until Daily 5 and return to their seat. Students are split into groups to shop Monday through Thursday. Friday mornings are saved for any student who was absent on his/her day to shop. I will change the baskets of books when new themes are introduced in our class and/or if I see an increased interest in a certain type of book.

 

"A"ccuracy Mini-Lesson for ENDing Sounds!

Today's "A"ccuracy mini-lesson was strictly focussing on the ending sounds in words. We went through each picture on the board and wrote the ending sound we heard next to the picture. We then matched the pictures at the bottom to pictures on the board that have the same ending sound. We finished by reading through each picture and using our Zoo Phonics motion for the ending sound. If we did the same motion for each picture, we were correct!

 



Guest Reader!

One of my students from last year came to read to our class today. I was very excited to hear how well she was reading. First grade must be treating her very well! Way to go Meredith! We were able to use the story she read in our second CAFE mini-lesson on fiction vs non-fiction books. The class used her book as an example of a fiction book and the book I read, Mice Squeak We Speak during the mini-lesson was a non-fiction book.

Accuracy-Beginning & Ending Sound Word Match

One of our mini-lessons today focused on beginning and ending sounds. I placed five cvc words on the board and five matching pictures below the board. Before we began, we named off what each picture was and the students thought in their heads which words might match those pictures. One student at a time came up and picked a picture and matched it to the correct word using their knowledge of beginning and ending sounds. After matching the word, we used our Zoo Phonics sounds and signals to match the picture and word. For example, for the picture/word "bus" we said each sound in isolation and then blended the sounds together to make the word. We started with "b", "u", "s" and put it together and read "bus"!

Accuracy Mini-Lesson

We have been working on beginning and ending sounds for a few weeks now. Today, we talked about how knowing the beginning sounds of words helps when we are reading. If we know the beginning sound a word makes we can sometimes match the word to a picture. If the picture and beginning letter sound match, then chances are the word is correct too! We practiced the beginning and ending sounds strategy today by looking at four different pictures and writing the beginning and ending sound we hear with the word. We will match words to pictures later in the week for a review of this CAFE strategy.

Sight Word Table Names

I changed our table names today. Since the beginning of school our table names have been color words. Now that we have 8 sight words, we have more than enough to make our table names sight words! Below are the sight words for each table.