Working hard!

     Writing-

     We have our Writers Workshop up and running! It is exciting to see the students working on writing each day. We only did free writing this week, but will be starting an actual writing unit next week.

     Each day I try to call back 2 small groups of writers to do conferences with. This week our focus was punctuation and capitalization. As the year goes on we will focus on word usage, adding ideas, and publishing their work. 

Hard at work during writing

Using the Dictionary!

One of my writing groups

hard at work.

During reading we have started working with a reading partner so a big focus this week was working at a Level 1 whisper voice when working with a buddy.

We also worked on metacognition (thinking about our thinking/reading) using wordless picture books. The kids "read" a book with their group and then posted their thinking using our thinking stems (I predict, I wonder, I noticed...)

Working together to read a book

Using their metacognition

Pictures of their thinking about the wordless books 

"When I read Flora and the Flamingo I was wondering why she wanted to be a flamingo."

Every day during reading we have been doing some SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) working on our reading stamina. The goal is 15 minutes each day so that students are reading their own book that they can then write to me about. 

Part of our discussion was that students need to pick good fit books. These books shouldn't be so easy that they speed through them or so hard that they struggle to get through each page. 

I brought in different types of shoes to show that each book has a purpose (golfing, running, or (my favorite idea from a kiddo) date night). We also talked about how it was too hard for me to walk in Mr. Cox's shoes and our student shoe was too small for me so they weren't good fits. 

A big part of LEAD21 is doing research and inquiry. This week the students looked through our first theme readers and chose some ideas for research projects for our first unit.

Finally, because we couldn't go outside this week we have been doing some brain breaks in the classroom. I snapped a couple of pictures of one of the dances, it was so fun to watch and they were so much more focused afterwards!

2nd Grade Smiles

Welcome to our blog! My goal is to post pictures and updates to our blog every 2 weeks, but it may be even more often! I will also still email parents as important events and reminders occur, but please check back to the blog for information about what is happening in our classroom!

 In Math we have been working hard on expectations for partner work and math games. The students have played number top-it and rich robots (counting coins). 
In small group I have been doing some baseline checking for understanding so I can create math groups. We have worked on counting coins and making change in different ways (25 cents as a quarter or 2 dimes and a nickel or 5 nickels) and using a number line to count backwards and forwards. 

Playing number top-it

+1/+2 Spinner Game

 As a class we have been working on classroom expectations and personal responsibility. Each morning the students first job was to answer a "big idea" question. We discussed what students should do and what the teacher should do in order for us to have a successful and positive year.  The kids were so wonderful at coming up with ideas and it gave them ownership of our classroom since all of our expectations came from them!

We have started up our Writer's Workshop. One of the things that we did was create heart maps about what things we know a lot about. These maps will be put into their writing folders so that they have ideas for writing all year long.

 READING! WOW! We have had some wonderful and deep conversations this week with reading. We talked about how to pick a book to fit our needs. 

We have talked about metacognition which is thinking about your thinking. We have discussed how when we read books we need to be constantly thinking about the book and making connections. 

After students read on Thursday they put up a sticky note for me to read so that I would know what they were thinking about while they were reading that day.

We also set reading goals for this year. Some students did goals for types of books they wanted to read this year and others focused on reading fluently or working on comprehension. It was so fun to see what kinds of goals students thought up to set for themselves.

Reading books so I can 

make my own books

I want to read about trucks 

because they interest me 

Countdown to First Grade E-I

We have had so much fun counting down to First Grade! The students can't quite wrap their brain around the fact that they are going to be First Graders. :)

 

For E we had Extra Recess. The kids loved being outside for the extra couple of minutes! I am so glad that Spring has finally arrived so we could enjoy it.

 

F was visit a First Grade Classroom. Before going the students wrote up questions that they wanted to ask the First Grade students, and we did little interviews. After learning all about First Grade they wrote about what they were excited to do next year, and we worked on writing thank you notes to the classes that let us come in.

 

 

G was the most exciting day for the students! They actually got to chew gum in the classroom!!! At the end of the day we watched a short video about how gum is made and then everyone tried to blow bubbles. Unfortunately Mrs. Cox got the wrong kind of gum for blowing, but quite a few students were able to get theirs to blow! We made a graph of who could and could not blow bubbles with their gum.



I love their looks of concentration as they try to blow
bubbles!

H was Hat Day and almost everyone remembered to bring their hats in. They loved wearing their hats throughout the day. During Math we practiced counting, tallying, and graphing with the different types of hats. We also read Caps for Sale.

Graphing their hats

I was a wonderful treat! We got to eat Ice Cream! We all sat and enjoyed an Ice Cream Sandwich to get ready for our weekend. :)

Countdown to 1st Grade A-D

It is hard to believe that the year is almost done! 

This group of sweethearts have grown SO much in the past 154 days and we are celebrating with an ABC countdown to First Grade.

 

Our class at the beginning of the year

For A we put things into ABC order. The kids did really wonderfully when they came to students who had the same first letter and really figured out how to go through the letters to decide who went first in our line.







Please excuse the black frame, I was still figuring out
the iPad camera!

It is really hard to get 25 kids to look and smile in the
same direction at the same time, so we gave in and did a
silly picture!

 Day 2 was Bring your favorite book. We spent the day reading everyones favorite books from home. This class absolutely loves reading!

 

Day 3 was Color so everyone wore their favorite colors, a very bright class that day!

Day 4 was 'Do day so everyone wore their craziest hairdo! This picture doesn't do justice to the curls, colors, braids and mohawks we had going on that day. :)

 

Among all of our fun we are getting a lot of learning into our last weeks of Kindergarten. We have been learning about community helpers, and how we should act in our home, school, and city communities.

 

A parent in our school is a firefighter, and she graciously came in and talked to our classes all about their very important job.

 

We also had a visit from Eric Rohmann who taught us all about how to write books. He was very funny and the kids loved his talk!

 

 

To wrap up our unit on community helpers each child researched a community helper of their choice and then wrote a book about them. They then dressed up as their community helper and presented their learning to other classes.

 

No April showers here!

We had a very sunny week in Kindergarten! The weather has finally begun to warm up and I can tell the students are able to run around more at recess so they can focus in the classroom. :)

Reading:
We worked on story maps this week. After reading stories I had the students tell me the setting, characters, beginning/middle/end. We are really working on the big ideas for beginning/middle/end and trying to not get caught up in the little details.

We continued our Inquiry study of community jobs by doing some research. I checked out a lot of books from the library and the students filled in a web with their job, 3 facts that they got from their book, and a picture. Next week we will be making them into picture books!

 

Writing:

We worked on writing poetry this week! We read many different animal poems and discussed how the poets used describing words to tell what the animal looked like and things that it did. The students and I then worked together to write a poem about a cat and one about a shark. Next week we will continue with writing poetry!

 

Math:

We did some more work with story problems this week. The students wrote their own story problems for us to make into a class book.

We have also been working really hard on our coin identification. Students are expected to correctly identify the penny, nickle, dime, and quarter out of order by the end of Kindergarten. If your child can already do this, practice counting up the amount of money in a pile.

 

We also learned a new math game, disappearing train game. In this game each player starts with 10 blocks and then they add more or take away with a special addition/subtraction dice. The person with the first train to "disappear" wins!

 

Science:

We finished up food groups this week with fruits, grains, and oils. Your child should have brought home the food group packet that we've been working through for the past 2 weeks.



Out like a lion

We couldn't believe it was actually SPRING when we came back from break! With all the snowpants and boots at the beginning of the week the students were so glad when they only had to carry their coats to specials on Friday.

Here's a quick recap of our week:

Reading:
Our new theme question is: How do our actions affect others? We did a lot of work this week with manners at home. Our vocabulary words were polite and share so we practiced doing those two things a lot!

The inquiry we will be working on is with community helpers. So we wrote a list of community helpers here in Ankeny and each student chose one that they are going to research and write a book about!

Writing:
We started our unit on poetry this week. We read many different poems and the students practiced visualizing the pictures in their heads. For one poem the students did draw a picture of what they saw in our minds as I read the poem to them.  Next week we will be writing animal poetry!

Math:
All week we worked on solving story problems. The students need to know whether a story problem is an addition or subtraction problem, and need to be able to identify the correct sign (+ or -). If they are able to do that I have them also write the number sentence to go with the problem (3+2=5).
On Friday they made their own egg story problems.

Science:
We have been talking about the food groups. We learned about the grains, meat/beans, and vegetable groups this week. When you are eating dinner you could ask your child which foods belong to which group!

Have a wonderful weekend!