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