This was our first "Poem of the Week". We usually perform the poem twice, once without motions and once with motions. We practice our reading fluency every day by reading through our poem and diving into various aspects of language within our poem. We will be doing a poem every week!
Reading:
In reading this week, we focused on continuing to build our reading stamina. We made it to right around our goal of 15 minutes so many times! We will be ready to move forward to practicing writing stamina next week! Being able to sit and read through the same 4-5 books over and over again allows students to really dive in and examine each book. They take special care in looking at the details of the pictures, the letters and creating or retelling stories in their heads. Watching five and six year olds begin to develop as new readers is simply amazing. We also talked about how they are able to independently find a "smart spot" to read their books in the room. A smart spot is somewhere on the floor, that is bubble space away from others. They did GREAT with this newfound freedom to pick a place to sit and read!
We enjoyed focusing on our favorite hard working letters of the alphabet....the VOWELS! A-E-I-O-U are very important to learn when we read and write! We practiced these letters in several ways this week, we used an app on the iPad, we went on a "letter hunt", played Swat-It and found the letters in books! We never knew reading and learning about letters could be so much fun!
In introducing and practicing our sight words every week, we have a "Give me 5!" board as we leave the classroom. The students read the word or words on the hand and give it a high five as the exit the classroom! They LOVE it and so do I!
Math:
This week's focus in math was all about the numbers 0-10. We started the week off by focusing in on only the numbers 0-5, then moved on to 6-10 and then practiced with all of the numbers! We sang poems, counted out math tools/objects according to that number, sang the number writing song, played Swat-It and much more!
Content:
This week our theme was all about "Getting to Know You". I absolutely loved this laid back time where we learned so many new things about each of our new friends.
- We played a toss the beach ball game where whatever color your thumb was on when you caught the ball, you had to answer a question that went with that color.
- We took pictures with our friends who have the same birthday month as each other to hang in our room.
- We also played a similar Starburst candy game where you closed your eyes, picked out a piece of candy and answered a question before you could eat it!
- We finished our week off by sharing our "getting to know you" bags. I sent home a brown bag with each student and they were to fill it with four items, no less and no more, that give us a little more insight as to who they are.
Next week:
- In reading we will continue to work on building reading stamina, but we will also introduce and begin practicing writing stamina.
- In writing, we will focus on the letters Dd, Cc, Ee, Ff, Gg
- In math, its all about 2D shapes! Square, circle, triangle, rectangle and hexagon!
- Our theme next week is the ABC's and our names!
- 9/7 Labor Day NO SCHOOL
- 9/16 School Pictures
- 9/30 Field Trip to Exploration Acres (more info to come)
- 10/9 End of First 9 Weeks
- 10/19-10/22 Parent/Teacher Conferences
