This Week in Kindergarten

This week during Reading Workshop we:

• learned about a period, comma, question mark, exclamation point, quotation marks, and an ellipsis.  Children should be able to name a period, question mark, and exclamation point by the end of kindergarten, so these are the punctuation marks we will focus on the most.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• read aloud Alphabet Conversations (see picture below) and Is Your Mama a Lama? to help us practice reading like the punctuation tells us to read. 
  
• practiced reading and spelling "have."
• reviewed that readers notice when something doesn't make sense/sound right.  When this happens, readers don't just continue reading.  They reread and keep working on that word/page until it does make sense and sound right.
• listened to and talked about poems I read aloud.

This week during Writing Workshop we:

• reviewed that before we begin writing about a topic, we need to make sure we know enough about it.  Writers can tell facts across their fingers to make sure the topic is a good fit.  
• learned that writers can write captions with their pictures to help their readers better understand what the picture is showing.
• learned that writers can add a glossary to the back of their all-about books.
  
• learned that if we run out of room on a page, we don't have to be done with that section of our book.  We can add another page and keep going!
• learned that writers do not have to start a new book every day.  They can go back and revise books from an earlier date to include more.

This week during Math we:

• learned about the penny.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• learned about the nickel.
• played "Coin Exchange," a game in which children collect pennies then exchange them for nickels when they have five pennies.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• learned about base-10 blocks.  Children played a game with these to help them learn more about exchanging. 
• learned about 3-dimensional shapes. 

Next week, we will publish our All-About books.  Students will choose one book and create an All-About poster.  These posters will be lining our hallway soon!

Have a nice weekend!
Katie

Welcome, Spring!

 It may not feel like spring outside yet, but it sure does in our classroom thanks to the beautiful flowers the children made.  We made these flowers on Friday as part of our math time. We learned that there are many different ways to make ten.  Students worked with ten cubes to find different combinations that make ten.  Students wrote addition number models equalling ten on the petals of their flowers.

This week during Math we also:

• practiced skip-counting and looking for patterns using individual number grids.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• learned a new game, The Raft Game, to help us learn about trading/exchanging. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• practiced estimating.
• practiced solving addition and subtraction number stories and writing number models to show our stories.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

This week during Reading Workshop we:

• learned the word "have" and added it to our word wall.
• reviewed that when readers use pictures to help them figure out a word, sometimes the clue might not be on the surface of the picture.  Readers need to look deeper and think about the whole picture and what is going on.
• learned to pay attention to the end of words and sorted pictures by the sound they end with.
• learned to pay attention to the vowel sound we hear in words and sorted pictures by the vowel sound. 

We also had a special author, Chris Van Dusen, visit this week.  We were so lucky to hear him read aloud three of his books!

This week during Writing Workshop we:

• practiced thinking of a topic we know all-about and telling the facts we know before we begin writing.
• learned to add a Table of Contents to our all-about books.
• learned that writers can write more than one sentence on each page.
• learned to add a heading to each page that matches our Table of Contents.
• learned to listen to the end of words and to write a letter for the ending sound (many children have been leaving off the ending in words).

  

  
  

   

Happy Spring!
Katie

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Dear Parents,

I apologize for not including any pictures in this week's post.  Sometimes, the week gets away from me and I realize I didn't take many pictures throughout the week.  I promise to include plenty of pictures in my next post.  Thanks for understanding!

Last week during Reading Workshop we:

• learned about the -at word family and created a list of words that belong to this family.  
• learned that when two vowels are side-by-side in a word, usually you hear the name of the first vowel and the second vowel is silent.
• reviewed that when we finish reading a nonfiction book, we need to tell the big idea and details about the book before we move on to a new book.  Reading is thinking!
• added "for" to our word wall.

Last week during Writing Workshop we:

• finished publishing our how-to books.  This was a more time consuming project than I had anticipated it would be, but we finished and shared our posters with the class.
• learned that we can write our own nonfiction books (all-about books).  We are experts in many areas, and we can write books to teach others what we know.
• learned that when we write all-about books, we are writing nonfiction books to teach others new information instead of writing stories about something we've done.

Last week during Math we:

• played Addition Top-It.
• learned about +0 and +1 addition facts.
• created and analyzed a graph depicting the pets we have.

Until next week,
Katie

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

On Monday, we celebrated the birthday of Dr. Seuss through our March community meeting.  We also spent the week sharing laughs by reading many different Dr. Seuss books.  The children have been drawn to our collection of Dr. Seuss books, and they have even been choosing to read them during Free Exploration time!

Although our reading unit is currently focused on Nonfiction books, we mixed in lots of fantasy this week through our Dr. Seuss read alouds.  We were able to practice identifying and naming rhyming words. 

This week during reading, we also read/sang Down by the Bay.  We identified rhyming words in this familiar song, came up with our own rhyming ideas for the song, and used the book to learn the word "by."

During a nonfiction book lesson, we learned about captions.  It is important for readers to read the captions on a page as they help them better understand what the picture is showing.

As always, we had a week full of literacy work stations!

Handwriting Work Station

iPad Work Station

Listening Work Station

ABC Work Station

Writing Work Station

Shared Reading Work Station

This week during Writing Workshop, we tried to wrap-up our How-To Unit.  I say "tried" because most of us still have some work to finish on Monday.  We spent the week publishing one of our how-to books.  We:

• edited our book for finger spaces and correct spelling of word wall words.
• rewrote our book onto our final draft paper.
• drew new illustrations.
• wrote over all our pencil in marker.
• glued the pages of our book onto construction paper.

The plan for next week is to finish publishing our books on Monday and to share them on Tuesday.  We will also begin nonfiction writing next week!

This week during math we:

• spent a few days continuing to learn about measurement.  We reviewed that it is important to have standard size units.  We learned about a ruler, meter stick, and tape measure, and we had time to measure objects in the classroom using all three tools.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• practiced skip counting by 5's and discussed the pattern we noticed (every number as either a five or a zero in the one's place).
• learned about tally marks. 
• played a game to help us practice addition facts.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

We had another cold week with many inside recesses.  Let's hope that by "springing forward" this weekend we leave the frigid days behind us.

Sincerely,
Katie