Reading Strategies

To help our students have a visual place to house the reading strategies they are learning, we use the C.A.F.E. menu (Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expand Vocabulary).  The strategies we are learning to help us become a better reader are listed on posters behind our meeting area under one of these headings. We point to the card where the strategy is listed and practice these strategies as a group, before we begin to use them on our own.  The "C' stands for Comprehension.  The students are learning that good readers understand what they read and to help support this, we are learning how to, "check for understanding." INQUIRE with your child about how they, "check for understanding."  

 How can you help your child with this strategy at home? 

1. When reading to your child, stop periodically and say, “Let’s see if we
remember what I just read.  Think about who the story was about and
what happened.”  Do this 3 or 4 times throughout the story.

2. When reading to your child, stop and have them practice checking for
understanding by saying, “I heard you say…”

3. Ask your child the following questions:
• Who did you just read about?
• What just happened?
• Was your brain talking to you while you read?
• Do you understand what was read?
• What do you do if you don’t remember? 

Students are also working on a number of accuracy strategies (the "A" in CAFE).  As students read, they are working on using their finger to point to the words, reading only the words on the page, and also getting their mouth ready and read through the word.  All students have a number of "just right" books in their book box that they practice using these strategies to help them read accurately.  

Animals in Winter

What do animals do in the winter? This week, students are exploring this question through read alouds, songs, and discussions.  The children have been looking at how animals in Vermont either migrate, hibernate, or stay active throughout the cold winter months.  As the snow falls this week, children are not only thinking about how they are taking care of themselves but also looking at what animals are doing to get ready for winter.  Most of the children are extending their learning during "work on writing" time - a component of our Daily 5 time.  During this time, children work on their choice of writing genre and their choice of topic. Throughout the last few weeks, students have been learning about different kinds of writing and have learned that writers make lists, make posters, write letters, write true information and facts they know, tell stories, write fantasy, and much more.  As I conferenced with a few students today during this time and noticed the range of writing being done - but interesting enough - most of the writing was about Vermont Animals and getting ready for winter!

Number Corner

How is the end of November here already??  The year is going by so fast..   This past month, students explored a different - not your typical color or shape pattern.  Although the pattern took a little while to figure out, students have now mastered this A, B, C, D pattern that shows butterflies in different directions.  Working on learning our right and left, students often demonstrated this pattern with their hands. Using their whole body, students were able to practice and master the pattern.  INQUIRE with your child about this month's pattern. 

November is just about over and so are 57 school days.  These school days have been filled with curiousity, creativity, learning, and laughter.  Students have been keeping track of each day in school this year and counting them each day.  INQUIRE with your child how they count how many days in school.  I encourage students to think of a variety of ways to solve problems - not just one.  Just as we can count these links by 1's we can also count by 10's and 1's.  Today, children decided to count by 10's to 60, then subtract 3!  What clever mathematicians we have! 

Creation Station

Conversations were low at the creation station this afternoon so I headed over to see what the children were up to....  low and behold they weren't messing about...they were ALL creating their own personalized books and sounding out words to include their best guess spelling.  As I sat down and explored their creations, students began sharing their stories and ideas to one another and learning continued.  Not only do children engage in reading and writing during literacy time - but during choice time as well.  Given the freedom of materials, students continue to amaze me as they extend their own learning above and beyond! 

Hearts

I spent a few minutes in P.E. today and observed Mr. Williams working with students to become more physically fit and knowledgeable about their hearts.  Students worked through the four chambers of a heart in this interactive obstacle course.  INQUIRE with your child about their heart and how blood is pumped through!  Enjoy this short video!  See below for an update for the month of November below.

Personalize a slideshow design   We have had an exciting November filled with activities that your children have loved! We just completed a successful unit of Jump Rope.  Throughout the past four weeks kindergarteners learned a variety of jump rope techniques including: a variety of short rope jumps, long rope, and Chinese jump roping. The culminating activity for the students was the “heart obstacle course” to reinforce the essence of daily physical activity and the impact on the heart circulatory system. We had a great month of continuing to get to know each of our students, and we look forward to having another successful unit. Beginning the month of December, we will begin a Gymnastics (tumbling and balance) unit.  Students will be introduced to basic gymnastics fundamentals in tumbling such as; log roll, forward roll, egg roll, static and dynamic balance routines. Your son/daughter will develop spatial and body awareness, self-confidence, muscle strength/endurance, and flexibility.  Thank you again for helping us to have successful Physical Education classes. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or concerns. One final note, Please help your son/daughter to remember to wear elastic-waist, stretchy material pants/shorts, a short/sleeved t-shirt, and sneakers. It is very important that the students come prepared for class!

Harvest Celebration

Children spent the afternoon preparing for your visit by making cornbread muffins - some even gluten and dairy free for those of you with allergies!  What fun it is to cook in our classroom - especially to have a purpose and end goal of sharing and celebration (we hope there's no eggshells)!  We look forward to seeing you tomorrow at our Giving Thanks celebration at 1:45.  We hope to see you there! Thank you so much for supplying us with papergoods and muffin tins today! Now to remember to haul them to school tomorrow morning to return to you before the thanksgiving break. 

The First Thanksgiving

Every day last week, children read, re-read and learned to retell with pictures then without the story of the Pilgrim's first Thanksgiving. To bring the story to life toward the end of the week, after each had significant experience with the story sequence and details of the events, we acted it out! Taking time to role play, recall what happened when and with/to who is important to building a foundation for strong literacy comprehension - we understand what we read! Of course, acting out an event in literature is incredibly fun too! Ask your child to re-tell the First Thanksgiving story to you, and be sure to read it with them from their book basket when you visit for our Giving Thanks event with families and friends in the classroom tomorrow at 1:45 p.m.

Along with learning about the Pilgrim's first thanksgiving, our friends have been making connections to their own celebrations.  Many children have been sharing stories about spending time with cousins and grandparents in years past and getting ready for the upcoming celebration.  We've been exploring various traditions different families have at home and thinking about what we look forward to this year.  As we continue to explore the difference between fiction and nonfiction, students are beginning to make a clear distinction - especially when the turkey's dress up and start to run away from thanksgiving dinner. We've read some true stories about pilgrims and the first thanksgiving but have also mixed in a few of my favorite stories involving turkey shenanigans! 

Word Work

As we continued to learn about word work this week and develop behaviors and expectations associated with doing this component of daily 5, students were ecstatic over many of the new tools and games learned throughout the course of the week.  Some of these games are highly differentiated and students work in groups practicing sight words at their own instructional level.  INQUIRE with your child what activity or game they liked best.  How do they play moose and who were their competitors? Did they show sportsmanship if they did not win?  

New Friends, Old Friends

On Friday, we welcomed a new friend to our class.  We are excited to have him and his family join us in our class community beginning Monday.  INQUIRE what this child's name is with your child and please welcome their family when you see them around.  We will spend a lot of time on Monday and Tuesday reviewing classroom rules, expectations, and helping him to get acquainted into our classroom community.

Look who's guest reader!

You You Grandparents can be guest readers too!  If you're a grandparent and want to visit our classroom to read to the children, don't forget to sign up! We have plenty of Friday's that are available!  This past week, Grandma Joan read us stories about moms, dads, and one of my favorite, "A Stranger in the Woods."

 

You too can be a guest reader in our classroom.  Click on this link to sign up now! 

http://www.signupgenius.com/go/508044AADAF2BA46-friday

All School Assembly

Friday morning, students throughout the whole school joined together in an all school assembly.  Our 4th grade buddies travelled with us to the assembly, showing us the expected behaviors to show as we all sit in the big gym.  These assemblies follow the same format as our class morning meetings. During the assembly, students do a greeting, share, news, and also an activity or song.  This week, a third grade class performed a synchronized dance they had learned with MJ, a physical education teacher.  Our C.A.R.E.S. curriculum is always reviewed and all the classes were honored for working hard to achieve success in following these school rules.  Throughout the assembly, the message to students was to stay active - not only during the school day - but during the weekends as well!  INQUIRE with your child what movement activities our class participates in throughout the school day!

Recipe for a Forest

Well, as you know from watching the video of Mrs. Wrigley and I trying to make a forest during our ECO lesson at Harrison Field last Wednesday we had a lot to learn from our students about what actually does make a forest. Through a brief reflection to begin our science lesson this Wednesday, students from both classes shared they found rocks, logs, trees, pine needles, pine cones, water, sun, leaves, feathers, streams, and more while on their forest scavenger hunt last week. Mrs. Wrigley and I co-taught this extension lesson and led students in a shared writing to match forest pictures and write the names of each item as a whole group to identify the objects, and practice sound spelling each label.  Students then got to work on their own forest recipes... each child decided if they wanted to include five or up to ten forest items in their recipe, then glued the item onto their recipe "card" and wrote the item's name using sound spelling strategies, as well as their visual memory of the words from our shared writing activity. Enjoy reading our class' forest recipes on the bulletin board the next time you are in the hall outside our classroom! INQUIRE with your child what ingredients they included in their own recipe.  

 

Thanksgiving Sing-A-Long

To help create community among all the Kindergarten classes, we continue to gather for group sing-a-longs.  Hilary Sales, our music teacher has joined in to begin integrating classroom learning into her classes as well.  We are now not only learning new songs in the classroom but singing the same ones in music class on Tuesdays.  Today, we celebrated our thanksgiving learning by singing, "Thanks A Lot."   Each month we will continue to add one song to our community sing-a-long.  Don't worry - we're hoping to plan something for families in the spring to celebrate our year-long learning. Enjoy the slide show of songs below!  Oh, and our guest teacher accidentally sent home most of the children's turkey hats but we're happy families enjoyed them yesterday! 

Customize a free digital slideshow

Festivities

I was so impressed with the turnout for the Thanksgiving lunch - that I forgot to take pictures of everyone!   This morning we made turkey hats for the festive occasion and never once took a picture!  OH NO!  Anyways, THANK YOU to all who came to enjoy lunch with your child. I was so proud of all your children and the manners they showed throughout the luncheon.  GOBBLE, GOBBLE! Hopefully we'll see a few of you on Tuesday as well!  Stay tuned to learn about our learning of, "The First Thanksgiving."  INQUIRE with your child about the event that happened hundreds of years ago. 

Guest Reader

 

 

Thank you to Katie for coming in to be guest reader last Friday.  Students love having their families in and we love seeing the enjoyment that others have for the love of reading!  As students are working on their own strategies for decoding, building stamina, and learning about various features of fiction and nonfiction, this opportunity for others to share their stories through books is wonderful.  We look forward to having Grandma Joan be our guest reader next Friday, November 16th!  We will be attending an assembly and look forward to hearing stories when we return from the assembly.  

If you are a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, friend, coworker, administrator, or school volunteer, we'd love to have you come share your love of reading in our classroom as well.  Please check the schedule below to sign up for a date that works best for your schedule.  Thanks! 

http://www.signupgenius.com/go/508044AADAF2BA46-friday

Turkey Day Lunch Schedule CHANGE!

I was informed today that the Thanksgiving lunch schedule has changed and we will be going at 12:05, not 11:55.  The staff is trying to keep the waiting time in line down to a minimum.  The kitchen staff serves many children during this time and in past, families can wait 20 minutes for their scrumptious meal.  See you tomorrow if you plan to come! 

Word Work

This week, our classroom is launching our third daily 5 choice, Word Work.  Working with words helps children become better spellers and writers. Your child will learn about letters and how they work together.  Students will be exploring word families, digraphs, and blends, practice high frequency ‘heart’ words using play dough, stamps, tiles, wikki sticks, letter trays, beans, gel boards, whiteboards, and a variety of games. Working on words was very engaging and fun today as children rolled dice to determine which heart word to write.  The repetitive practice of writing each word will help the children master the spelling of the many tricky words we have in the english language! INQUIRE with your child what their favorite tool for word work is so far (more to come each day this week)!