The kids have started writing the morning message with me, once
they get into that routine I will try to post some pictures of what I have them
doing.
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| The kids doing one of our morning songs. |
During our whole group time in the morning we have a
phonological warm-up (beginning sounds, syllable clapping, or alphabet
activities). We also read the poem that goes with our unit and work on a
reading comprehension skill.
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| Working in a poetry journal |
While I pull small groups for reading the kids are working at
their table jobs. The students rotate through 4 different jobs, 1 each day. Once
they complete their table job they get their bag of books (browsing bag) and
read at least 3 books from it. They are then able to go to their station.
I don’t have pictures of table jobs yet, but here are some of
our stations!
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| Big book station- they can read the book and build words from the book. |
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| Listening station- I have book on CD for the kids to read and listen along to. |
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| Poetry station- The kids highlight words they know, put the poem strips in order, and illustrate poems in their poetry binders. |
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| Word work station- This is right by our word wall so students can practice copying words that we know. They can write on whiteboards, stamp, or build with cut out letters. |
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| Writing station- The kids can write stories, lists, letters, or work on words on whiteboards. |
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| ABC station- This one is car tracing a letter. There are lots of alphabet games to choose from. As the year goes on I will add word family and word games to this station.
After reading is done we have science. This unit was on using
weight to observe objects. I try to make our science hands on and practical for
the students.
For this activity we picked two different objects in our
classroom and made predictions about which one weighed more. We then recorded
our findings in our science journals.
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Our afternoon starts off with math. We have a calendar time
where we talk about the date, the day of the week, months, and the weather. We
practice counting and do a couple of math songs.
Most of the time when we do math we record in our math journals,
which stay at school, however many of you saw this math paper come home.
The kids had to use multiple skills to complete this activity. They
had to read the number I gave them, write it correctly, and correctly count out
the number of stickers (1 to 1 correspondence).
After math we have writing. We have been working on putting in
beginning and ending sounds in our words, though I do encourage students who
are ready for some middle sounds to add those as well. I work with small groups
during this time in order to instruct at student levels.
I encourage students to think of the letters on their own and not
rely on a teacher to tell them the “right way” to spell a word.
Below are two samples of writing to show the range of writing we
have already in kindergarten.
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| Things that are orange: Orange, car, couch |
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| Orange, crayon, pencil, box |
We end our day with math games. During math games students are
working on a specific math concept, but they are also learning some major
social skills. Playing fair, taking turns, knowing how to win and lose
appropriately are just some of the skills math games teach.
The game below is called “Cover All” and works on number identification
(with dice), counting, and one-to-one correspondence.
