Dr. Seuss Read-A-Thon

Becoming Writers...

The class has a solid understanding now of letters and letter sounds after being in school for a little over a month. We started working in our writing notebooks. This is where we practice writing full sentences and sounding out words. It is typical and totally normal for kindergartners to not spell words correctly--and I promise you that it is totally OKAY! As adults, we want to correct when we see a word that is misspelled. However, I encourage you to not do that with your child. It is all a part of their writing development and what most students do when they are in the emergent stages of spelling is write only the prominent sounds that they hear in words. Usually that is the beginning and ending letter sounds in a word and maybe a few sounds in the middle. If we are constantly correcting children in their writing, it decreases their writing confidence and they rely on us as a result to tell us how to spell. Rather, they should be sounding words out by themselves! 

Our first writing entry was completing the sentence "I am ______." I thought it'd be fun to write about what they are going to be for Halloween; after all, the class has been talking about it since September! 

I am Super Girl.

I am a ninja.

I am a monster.

I am Captain America.

I am a dragon.

I am Elsa.

I am Elsa.

I am Darth Varder.

Dr. Seuss Read-A-Thon
We practiced our writing skills during our Dr. Seuss Read-A-Thon on Friday. I read the book Green Eggs and Ham and then students glued photos of food and write down which food they picked. It was fun not only to see their illustrations of them "eating" their food, but to also see their different spellings of words. As I mentioned before, don't try to correct their spellings. Praise and build their confidence as budding writers instead! 

French fries

Fruit

Fruity Pebbles

Spaghetti

Popsicle 

Cupcake

Look at us writing!

Shake

During our Read-A-Thon, the class rotated to different classrooms and listened to different Dr. Seuss books. Then after the readings, they did different activities that revolved around those books. I wasn't able to get photos from the other rooms, but I do know they listened to The Cat in the Hat and The Foot Book. 

In the morning, we had a whole grade level morning meeting where we got to greet each other and play a game.

The game we played was 1 Fish, 2 Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Someone was blindfolded in the middle of the room and counted to 10 out loud. The rest of the kids had to walk to 1 of the 4 pictures (1 fish, 2 fish, red fish, or blue fish). Whatever picture was called out by the blindfolded person, those kids were out of the game and sat down. 

A BIG thank you to those families who helped raise money for our Read-A-Thon. We were able to raise over $24,000!--that is truly INCREDIBLE!!!! The support that this school has is unbelievable; I am very fortunate to work at a place that has such a strong, positive community. 

For those students who raised money, they were given raffle tickets with their names on it and got to put their tickets into different jars. Congratulations to Evan who got his name drawn for one of the special prizes!

What else have we been up to?
We finished up our ABC notebooks. A very special visitor came to our class on Monday morning for the letter X--it was Will and Olivia C.'s dad, Xilon! His name begins with X so he surprised Will who had the ABC letter bag! How fun is that??

We had Climb Theater come to our school on Tuesday afternoon and put on a play about bullying. 

We've been talking as a class about what bullying looks like, who is a bully, and how to stop a bully from hurting you. We will continue to have discussions like this as the year goes on. Our school has a no tolerance policy for bullying and my goal is to teach students what to do if someone is bothering you. 

Test-Taking
We took our very first test in kindergarten! I assessed students on their letters and letter sounds to see how they are progressing. The students learned what it looks like to take a test and that we don't peek at others' papers! 

No peeking folders help eliminate any peeking.

I will be able to talk with parents during conferences next month on how their child is doing in their academics. It is amazing how much growth I've seen from each and every one of them since the first day of school!

Pumpkin, pumpkin...

We cut out pumpkins and put ourselves inside!

Our poem says, Pumpkin pumpkin, Fat and wide, Open it up and _____'s inside! The kids loved it.

Speaking of pumpkins, we have some very decorative pumpkins on display on the top level hallway of our school. The fifth graders made these awesome creations! 

Toadally Terrific Award

Our student Savannah was drawn for the kindergarten Toadally Terrific Award on Wednesday morning. Every Tuesday, student tickets from our class get poured into the grade level jar for kindergarten. Then Dr. Warner draws a name on Wednesday from the grade level jar and if your name gets picked, you get a Toadally Terrific Award and your photo is taken for our school bulletin board. Students earn tickets daily by being safe, responsible, respectful, and doing their best. They could be doing anything to get those tickets as long as it fits one of those categories. I've discussed with the class that I will not always be giving them tickets for every single thing they do well--it's an in the moment kind of thing. Also, making good choices at school is not about these Toadally Terrific tickets--it's about doing their job and caring for one another. Students have had positive attitudes whether they get a ticket or not.

Academic Learrning

In math,we've been working on number writing and drawing pictures to show a number.

We do our math workbooks on the carpet. It's easier to see and follow directions with the Smartboard. 

In reading, we've been working on using our 3 reading strategies: 1) Point to the words 2) Use the pictures to help and 3) Pop the first letter sound. 

Way to go readers!

We are continuing to do math and reading stations. The class is doing very well with working with one another and getting their work completed on time. 

I have more photos to post--so stay tuned for them later!