ask me about wednesday, february 7, 2024

We started our day by studying this picture from a Pixar short we were going to watch.  In reading we will be working to make predictions, so we looked for clues in the picture to make a prediction about what might happen.  We watched the video to check our prediction.  We thought about what the message or lesson the writers might have wanted us to understand by watching the video.  We talked about kindness, including others, and not making judgements about others based on what they look like.  It was interesting to hear children sharing with their partner that they thought the big bird was mean because of the black rings around its eyes.  We also practiced retelling.  The children do a great job remember events in the story, but getting them in the right order and not leaving out important events is more difficult for them.  Ask me to retell this story to you before we watch it together.

We have started a new unit in our Benchmark reading.  This unit is called "Why do people tell stories?"  We talked about folktales being stories that were told by people to other people.  We know many of these stories have been made into books.  We watched an African inspired folktale/song performed by the great Pete Seeger.  Ask me to tell you the story of Abiyoyo.  I have included the video below but I am warning you, you might be singing Abiyoyo the rest of the night!

We will be reading more folktales over the next few weeks in recognition of Black History Month as well as the Lunar New Year.  So many good stories to share, so little time!
We practiced reading the text for our current unit in Really Great Reading.  I pointed out to the children that one BIG thing I noticed is that they are not stretching out the words now.  They are making their eyes move across the word to read it without saying each sound first.  This is something we have worked on for a couple weeks now and I am seeing big improvements.  We are moving on to making our eyes move across the whole line, chunking the words into groups so our reading sounds more like people talking than a robot talking.  
The children are getting more practice in reading short, simple books during our Independent Reading Time we have each day after lunch.  They choose books and a magazine and find a quiet place to read on their own.  I need to spend some time getting the books organized a little better so children will have an easier time finding books that are just right for them.  It's exciting to watch the changes I have seen since we first started this up until now.  They are becoming more focused and are building stamina.  
We are practicing counting to 100.  Many of the children can do it already but enjoy getting up and moving to Jack Hartman as he exercises and counts to 100.  The end of the year benchmark is 120.
We are continuing to work with the concept of more and less in math.  Being able to articulate which set has more or less is more of a challenge than just circling which one is more or which is less.  Although it is not in our curriculum, we are stretching and looking at sets to determine how many more or how many less.  They are doing this with manipulatives, pictures in the workbook and with just the numeral.  They are using the visualization strategy as well as learning to use a numberline.  

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe