font-family: 'Shadows Into Light Two', cursive;/ Life in Kindergarten: March 2018

Monday, March 19, 2018

Welcome, Spring!

Tomorrow is the first day of spring...what a wonderful feeling!  It might not seem like spring yet, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

During Writing Workshop the past couple of weeks, we finished our How-To unit and started our All-About unit.  The children all chose one how-to book to publish.  They went through the processes of editing and revising then rewrote their books onto a poster.  The children shared the posters with their peers, and now they are on display in the hallway.  Last week, we launched our nonfiction (All-About) unit.  The children have been learning to write facts about topics they know about.  This week, we will learn to add a Table of Contents to our books.

During Reading Workshop the past two weeks, we wrapped up our study of nonfiction texts.  The children learned to:
  • retell the big idea and details.
  • work with their reading buddies to closely study photographs and to talk about what the photographs are teaching them. 
  • ask questions as they read.
  • reread a text to learn more information each time. 
  • notice how photographs and words might teach us different information.
  • compare and contrast two books on the same topic.  
During Math we:
  • measured our heights using sticky notes to see if we would be tall enough to ride a roller coaster (given you had to be 12 sticky notes tall to ride the roller coaster).
  • told and solved subtraction number stories.

  • played games to help us practice adding and subtracting.
  • played a game called Hiding Bears to help us practice naming combinations of ten. 
  • sorted dominoes by the total number of dots then discussed the many different ways to make a number. 





During Word Work time, we have been working on tapping out the sounds in words (Stretchy Snake) to help us read unknown words, and listening to all the sounds in a word to help us build and write words.  We have also been working on hearing long and short vowel sounds in words.

Thank you for all the parent surveys that have been submitted so far.  If you have not had a chance to fill out the online survey and have a few extra minutes, I would appreciate your feedback.  Your comments help me to improve my teaching practice.  Thank you!

Warmly,
Katie



Friday, March 2, 2018

Learning to Edit and Revise

What a beautiful week back we had!  The children loved having the option of playing outside without snow pants (although many children decided to still to wear their snow pants).  What a great sign of the weather to come!

This week during Writing Workshop, we chose one of our how-to books to edit.  Each day, we went through a different step on an editing checklist.  The children edited their books for finger spaces, capital letters at the beginning of each sentence, punctuation, correct spelling of popcorn words, and lower case letters where they belong.  They also learned about revising.  The children revised their chosen books to see if they could add more information, like a what you will need page or a warning.  On Friday, we began rewriting these edited/revised books.  We will finish this process next week, then the children will share their published posters.  We will kick-off our new writing unit, All-About Books, the middle of next week.










During Reading Workshop, we worked on retelling stories.  We made retelling bracelets with beads that remind us to retell the characters, setting, beginning, middle, and end of each story we read.  We also spent time learning more about nonfiction.  I taught the children about bold words and a glossary.  We also learned that when we don't know the meaning of a word in a nonfiction text, we can use our prior knowledge and the pictures to help us think about what the word could mean.

During Math we:
  • learned about tally marks.



  • learned about the following 3-dimensional objects: cones, cubes, cylinders, spheres, and rectangular prisms.  We compared and contrasted these objects to 2-dimensional shapes.
  • used ribbon to measure our heights then used the ribbon to measure objects in the classroom.  Through this lesson, we talked about longer than, shorter than, and about the same length.


We also participated in our Science light lab this week.  The children rotated through five different experiments during which they made predictions and tested those predictions to answer five questions:
  • Is light made of many colors?
  • Can we make light bend (refraction)?
  • Can light bounce off objects (reflection)?
  • Is light needed to see an object?
  • Can light travel through objects?


 





 




This was a fun morning with a great deal of learning.  Ask your child to tell you about what he/she learned.   

Have a great weekend!
Katie