Happy Vacation!

I hope your children are enjoying the first few days of their vacation!  Hopefully we get a few sunny breaks this week.

Last week in Writing, we began our April unit: poetry.  We kicked off our unit on Monday by enjoying our writing block outside.  It was a beautiful day which worked out really well for our nature observations.  Children sat in a spot by themselves for about twenty minutes and recorded everything they heard, saw, felt, and smelled (we left out taste). 

 On Tuesday, we were so lucky to have Ms. Honan teach our writing lesson!  She used the children's notes from Monday's nature observations to teach children how to write poems.  Ms. Honan wrote several poems together with the class then all the children went back to their seats and wrote their own nature poems.  Ms.  Honan and I were very impressed with their first day of poetry writing!

The children also spent a chunk of their writing time last week listening to me read aloud poetry.  The children learned that although many poems rhyme, many poems do not rhyme.  A poem does not need to rhyme to be a poem.

Last week in Reading we:

• learned that when i is the only vowel in a word and it's in the middle of a word, it usually makes the short vowel sound heard in "him." 
• reviewed the different reasons a reader rereads text.  The children came up with reasons why they reread.  Reasons included: to learn more about a topic, to remember something, to learn a word that was tricky for you, and to listen for a rhyming or repeating pattern.
• learned about quotation marks and an ellipsis.  

Last week in Math we:

• learned about seconds as a unit of time and discussed different tools that keep track of seconds.  Different children moved across the room in a certain way (hopping, toe-to-heel steps, etc.) as we used a timer to keep track of the number of seconds it took that child to cross the room.
• Used calculators to practice skip-counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s.  Boy, do they love those calculators!!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• looked at pictures of butterflies to come to the conclusion that butterfly wings are symmetrical.  Each child then designed and painted a butterfly with symmetrical wings (They did the best they could do with this task!).  When we get back from vacation we will write butterfly poems.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
  
  
  One final part of our week was that every child shared his/her all-about poster with the rest of the class.  They were all so proud of their work, as they all should have been.  I was so impressed with the way all the posters turned out.  The children did a fabulous job presenting their posters to their peers.  As listeners, the children were very respectful and gave each other positive feedback about their work.  The slideshow below shows each child sharing his/her poster.
  
  

Wrapping up our March writing unit

Last week we spent our writing time publishing one of our all-about books.  Each child chose the all-about book he/she wanted to publish.  The kindergarten teachers thought it would be exciting for the children to create a poster to publish their books.  The children in our class worked on their posters every day last week.  They were responsible for rewriting each of their pages onto a final draft page.  Children had to make sure each sentence began with an uppercase letter, every sentence ended with punctuation, all word wall words were spelled correctly, and that they had finger spaces between words.  Children worked hard to produce their best penmanship and quality illustrations.  The children were so proud of their work.  The posters will be hung up this week, so be sure to check them out if you are at Rowe School.  I will take more pictures this week and post them on my next post.

Last week in Reading we:

• played "guess the covered word."  This is an activity that requires children to think about what word would make sense in a sentence.  Since one word is covered, children can't sound out that word and they are required to think about what would sound right and make sense.  After listing several possibilities, we slowly uncover the word.  Words that don't match are eliminated until we are left with one word.
• reviewed reading strategies to use when you get stuck on a word 
• reviewed expectations for buddy reading
• learned that if we are stuck on a word and have tried all the strategies we know, mark that page with a sticky note and ask our reading buddy for help.
• read with our first grade reading buddies.
• learned that when "o" is the only vowel in a word and it's in the middle of a word, it usually makes the short o sound heard in "dog."

Last week in Math we:

• played "guess the mystery block," a game that requires children to ask yes or no questions about attributes of the mystery block (example: Is the block red?).  Children ask these questions until there is only one block remaining.
• began to create attribute collages.  Each child chose one attribute then searched through magazines for pictures containing that attribute.

  

  Creating attribute collages

  

  This child is creating a collage with all pink flowers

  

  These girls are creating collages of things that are pink

• learned about halves of a whole.  Children shared objects, food, liquids, groups, etc. that can be divided in half.  We then practiced dividing different groups of children in half.  Children learned that half does not just mean two groups, it means two equal groups.
• practiced solving comparison number stories

One more busy week of learning and then your children have a well deserved break!  Have a nice week.
~Katie