January Happenings

What have we been up to?

In reading, we worked with partners on helping each other solve mystery words. I covered up several words with tiny post-it notes on our science curriculum's nonfiction readers. Strategies that students used included using the pictures to help (context clues), sounding out the first letter sound, and thinking if the word makes sense with the sentence. I want the class to comprehend if what they read makes sense or not. Does it sound right? Does it look right? Does the tricky word look similar to a word they already know? Reading is more than decoding words--it's about thinking and processing what's happening in the story too! 

The class is also learning to use areas in our room (such as our word wall and ABC posters) to help them remember sight words. For one reading lesson, I had them choose a sight word to look for in one of their books and count how many times they read it. They noticed that sight words show up a handful of times in our books and that's why it's important to know how to read them automatically. 

In writing, I started to do more open-ended writing with the class. Rather than giving them a sentence to finish, students now get to choose how they want to write about a specific topic. It went over very well with the class! Their writing confidence has built up SO MUCH since the fall. I remember back in October when we were working on just writing 1 or 2 letters of a word and adding a picture to go with it. That was very difficult for many! Boy, have they skyrocketed since then. Today, my kindergartners are spelling sight words correctly, using finger spaces in between words, putting punctuation marks at the end of sentences, and sharing their writing with others. They should feel so proud of themselves. :) The next skills I want to focus on are capitalizing the first word in a sentence and adding details. 

We've been learning about animals in science so the writing topic was, "If you could be any animal in the world, what animal would you be?"

I want to be a wolf because it has fur.

I want to be a chameleon because they can change colors.

I want to be a rabbit because they can hop,

I want to be a dog because they can jump (and) high.

I want to be an owl because they can fly.

I want to be a buffalo because they can run fast.

I want to be a shark because a lot of people watch them and they can stay cold.

In math, we are working on 5-groups and 10-groups to organize bigger numbers and make counting faster. 

Here we are using pennies to make 10-groups plus a number.

On another day, we used Cheerios to make 10 groups. 

10 + 6 = 16

10 + 5 = 15

They were so excited to eat the Cheerios afterwards.

In social studies, we learned about timelines and how each day has a sequence (morning, afternoon, and night).

We also learned about Martin Luther King Jr. and how he helped people get along a long time ago. More to come later this week!

On Friday, the class had a special visitor named Art who taught us our first lesson in BRAVO. Each month, he will be teaching us about different music, composers, and instruments. We learned about a Russian composer named Modest Mussorgsky and put on a play with one of his songs, The Hut on Fowl's Legs, in the background.