Week in Review!

We had a very busy, but short week here in room 26! It was so great to meet and see with all of you to discuss your child’s progress. A theme across the board is practicing sight words and numbers, over & over! An extra 5 minutes of practice at home with these skills will help your child continue forward with our second nine weeks skills.

READING:

-Our sight word this week was the word “am”.

-For morning work this week, we started practicing writing missing sight words in sentences. After the students worked on it individually, we came together and circled and wrote sight words on the ENO board using the same paper!

-The CAFÉ strategy we worked on this week was the strategy

“Retell Beginning, Middle and End”.

Summarizing a story is often used to retell, but is challenging for many kindergarten students. If it does pose a challenge, many times it is because students are trying to retell the whole story with great detail and don’t know how to cut it down to the most critical elements. This is when we step in with more modeling either with the whole group, in small groups, or one on one, depending on the number of students who need the strategy.

How can you help your child with this strategy at home?

1. When reading with your child, focus on three main parts of the story. What happened first in the story, in the middle and how did the story end. Try to not let your child get carried away with retelling fine details of the story if they are not pertinent to the outcome of the story.

2. Break it down into 3-4 pages in the story. Help your child flip to only those pages to help retell in order beginning, middle and end.

3. Before reading a familiar story, ask your child to retell it to you using the beginning, middle and end. Then read through the story and point out the parts where the story changes from the beginning to the middle to the end!

-Students have also started to use RAZ-KIDS in our classroom as an option during Read to Self. We take turns going through number order. One student each round gets to listen to stories and answer questions on the quizzes at the end during their Read to Self round for that day.

WRITING:

 

-We had a lot of fun this week in writing! We looked through our journals and picked a favorite piece that we had written so far this year to publish on our “GREAT WRITING” wall. Each student then shared his/her piece in our special “Authors and Illustrators” chair before putting it up on display in the classroom for all to see!

-The class also helped me revise my own writing on Wednesday. I had written a story about when our class went on a leaf hunt. I misspelled a few of our sight words and wrote the incorrect beginning, middle and ending sounds on a few words and the class helped me reread my writing and “fix” my errors! We talked about how they too can go back and reread their writing to make sure sight words and unknown words have all the letters needed in them!

 

 

Math:

-We continued to practice our “Number of the Day”. The class is getting really good at this! We write the number, the number word, tally marks, draw a picture, draw the dice, a number bond and a number line!

-We also started to practice showing different ways to make a number using our number stories and number bracelets. This choice is in our “Number Work” option for Daily 5 Math and if chosen, the student sits in front of our number stories and creates different ways to make numbers using the bracelets! They then repeat the way they showed the number on the bracelet for extra practice. It is quite the hit J.

 

 

CONTENT:

 

-We had an exciting week learning about the season fall and what happens to the leaves on the trees. We went on a leaf hunt, did leaf rubbings, created our very own “leaf man” after reading a story written by Lois Ehlert named Leaf Man and painted tissue paper leaves that are on display in our classroom!

Week in Review

Reading:

-Our sight word this week was the word “to”.

 

 

-The CAFÉ strategy we worked on this week was the strategy “Use TEXT Features”.

Non-fiction texts contain information that is true. They also contain features such as titles, headings and subheadings, captions, maps, diagrams, charts and graphs, legends, bold and italicized text, glossaries, indexes, and cutaways. These features are a common part of non-fiction reading that we often use or reference to help gain understanding of what is being read. As experienced readers, we do this without notice. When students read nonfiction material, they will also encounter text features that are different from those they come across when reading fiction. Students who have had experience and know the
purpose of text features improve their comprehension of the text.

How can you help your child with this strategy at home?

1. When reading with your child, tune in to these features and think out loud when you use them. For example, when coming across a word in bold print you might say, “I notice this word is darker than the rest of the words. It is in bold print. I bet the author wanted me to
notice this word because it stands out. I need to make sure I know what this word means.”

2. Break it down into individual text features to bring awareness to your child about these features in text. Begin by asking your child to look for words in bold. Then, have your child list any words in italics. You can also have your child look for titles, headings, charts, legends, glossaries, and captions.  
3. Guide your child in using his/her background knowledge about text features to aid in comprehension. Have your child read a non-fiction selection to you, stopping when a text feature is used. Ask your child to explain his/her thinking about that text feature to you.

-During one of our mini-lessons this week, we practiced identifying our letter sounds using an Alphabet Bingo board game! Each student sat next to a partner and as I called out a letter sound, they looked to see if that letter was on their board. We had several "Bingo's!" by the end of the lesson!

Math:

-This week we began practicing our “Number of the Day”. At the beginning of our 60
minute math block we always start off by doing this lesson. It begins by rolling a foam dice to determine what number is our special number of the day. We start the year off by writing the number, the number word, the number on a dice, drawing the number using shapes (circle, triangle, square, rectangle or hexagon), making a number line and circling the number, tally marks and a number bond. We then add addition and subtraction problems as the year goes on. We have a large board in our calendar area where we record each piece of the activity and the students also follow along and write on a dry erase board.

 

-We also introduced a new activity to Math by Myself. Using the geoboards, the students take a number card (that is made to look like its on a geoboard) and creates teh number using multiple rubberbands on their board!

Writing:

-We practiced writing and labeling three different pictures using an app on our classroom iPad. This app is called Educreations, I wrote the words phonetically on the pictures along with the students writing on their dry erase board. We stretched the words out together to write down the sounds we heard. We then recorded ourselves rereading what we wrote. You can view this lesson on a blog post earlier this week by clicking here.

-On Friday, we then took those same pictures and wrote a story/sentence to go along with them. I wrote on the picture while the students wrote along with me on their dry erase board. You can view both of these lessons on our classroom blog!

 

Students wrote the sentences along with me on their dry erase boards!

Content:

We learned so much this week about our community and many of the jobs within it. We learned about police officers, fire fighters, mail carriers, paramedics, librarians, teachers, doctors and many more! We also talked about the sounds we hear in the city and the country and read a book about different signs that we might see while riding in our car or
out and about! We shared our community helper homework “I’d Like to Be…” pages and finished the week with making a page where we put a picture of ourselves on to the community helper we want to be when we grow up!

 

Practice at Home:

--Have your child look at family pictures, magazines or favorite books and have them create a sentence and stretch out words they don’t know and write down the sounds they hear!

Something fun!

I had a substituted teacher Monday afternoon and upon returning Tuesday morning the sub had written 6 students names down for earning the Substitute Award Winner!

Congratulations!

 

 

We also had our first nine weeks behavior celebration this week. The students who had outstanding behavior and had higher than 80% on their behavior grade were able to attend our celebration. We had a laser light show set up in our cafeteria where we saw many different lights, pictures and words! It was very cool! We can't wait to see what our next celebration will be!

 

 

 

 

Weekly Poem--Come and Listen

Phonetic Writing

Today we practiced writing and labeling words to go with three different pictures. As I wrote the letters on the iPad, the students wrote the words on a dry erase board with me!

Press the play button below to watch our lesson in action!

 

 

Students writing along using their white boards.

 

 

Exploration Acres

We went on our first field trip to Exploration Acres! We enjoyed a tractor ride to pick a pumpkin at the pumpkin patch, finding our way through a cornmaze, jumping in a pile of hay, sorting rocks in the gem mine, climbing through a hay tunnel, eating lunch in the barn and much much more! Below is a video of several photos taken by the chaperones on the trip!

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Week in Review!

Math:

We created our “You Can Count On Me” board where each student put a picture of themselves on a paper person and placed it on the board close to the number they were able to count to. We had 6 students who are able to count to 100 and were awarded as our classroom “Math Magicians”. Each student’s goal is to be able to count to 100 by the end of the school year. I hope to have 18 class math magicians by the end of May, if not sooner!



--This week we practiced counting with a partner in Math with Someone by passing back and forth a Zoo Phonics stuffed animal between partners. The goal is to count to 25 and if they are able to count higher it’s a bonus!

--We introduced another “Math by Myself” activity where the student uses a deck of cards and math manipulatives. The student turns over a card and adds the correct number of manipulatives under each card. By the end they are able to see the various lengths of numbers under each card!

-We also reviewed our numbers and shapes by tossing a beach ball to each other. Whatever color our thumbs landed on, we had to tell the shape and two numbers written in that section!
 

Writing:

-We practiced writing sentences using our sight words in a class story about our field trip last week. We also had a celebration on Wednesday with our 5^th grade buddies from Miss Eloff’s classroom. They came to our room and sat with a student from our class and went through the writing journal helping add detail, write a new sentence and tell stories about writing.

-We also worked with our writing partners in class on using a check list to see if our writing has all of the parts needed for a complete writing piece!

Reading:

-Our sight word this week was the word “can”.

How can you help your child with this strategy at home?

*Become aware of the sight words your child is practicing. When reading, focus on one or two within stories.

*Remember review and repetition is invaluable. Be sure to practice the sight words a few minutes each night

*Create a game of “sight word memory”. Look for pairs of words that match and read the words as you turn them over.

*Have your child write a sight word on a card, cut the words apart and see if your child can put them back together.

*Create a game of “Go Fish”. After grasping the concept of the game, only count matches that can be read.

-We practiced the reading strategy “Identify the Setting in a Story”.  The setting is described by where the story takes place. Look through books and talk with your child about where the characters are and if the setting changes throughout the story.

 

-We also practiced our ABC letter sounds by playing a bean toss game onto a mat with letters!

EXTRA:

Miss Edmondson came into our class this week and read us a really neat story called Bully Beans. She taught us about standing up to bullies and even gave us our own jelly "bully" beans to give us courage to do so!

Fire Safety:

We had a wonderful week learning all about fire safety. We studied the fire fighters job, ways to be safe at home and school and what to do in an emergency. We practiced “stop drop and roll”, learned when to call 9-1-1 and that fire fighters are our friends.













  STOP  

  DROP  

  ROLL

Poem of the Week--Here Are My Eyes