We started our day with a collection of photographs that we analyzed and discussed. We looked for ways the pictures were the same to find out what they were showing. We found that these photographs all showed leaders. We learned about leaders at home and leaders at school. The tricky part is that we have not been at school, and the children do not know many of the leaders at our school, so we read a short book about what principals do. I asked the children about what other leaders they know and they mentioned me, several super heroes, Paw Patrol characters and Star Wars characters! I was happy to make their list! It was mentioned, finally, that a dad is a leader, but they did not mention a president, a mom, or police officer. We will continue to talk about what a leader is and who leaders are in our community and in our country. We will also talk about how they can be leaders throughout the year by making good choices, helping others and leading by example.
In reading, we read a realistic fiction book about rules. We focused on key events in the story. This is still a rather tricky for the kids to identify. We are working to identify something specific that happened. We work on this throughout the school year. We also reviewed talking and thinking bubbles, which were throughout the book. Then, the children wrote a key detail from the book with me, then wrote one on their own. We are starting reading groups. Today I introduced them to their groups and we worked on going to break-out rooms. Today I asked them to talk in their breakout room to find out what their friends' favorite desserts are, and to remember their name so they could tell the whole group what dessert was someone from their group's favorite. This encourages them to listen to what others are saying, and will help them learn the names of other children in the groups. Some children will change groups as time goes on, based on what they need to learn in reading and writing. Please don't be worried if this occurs, especially initially because I am going off the MAP-RF data and the data I collected on letters, sounds and words. Some children weren't as comfortable taking risks as others, so some children may get moved. I don't normally name groups because I don't want the children thinking some groups are smarter than others or groups just getting a reputation, but for online I will be naming them to make it faster to get them to breakout rooms. Our groups are named for characters from Toy Story, so we have the Hamms, the Potato Heads, the Slinky Dogs, and Rex's group. The children are so excited to start reading groups, and so am I! It will be a great way for them to get to know each other better in addition to reading instruction. Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe
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We started our day thinking about ants again! We watched this short video and talked about what we noticed and about the message. Ask me to tell you what happens in the video that shows "we're stronger when we work together." We looked at our National Geographic Ants book once again to identify the text features. Then we finished comparing the two texts, Hey, LIttle Ant and Ants. We will in the chart below to organize our thinking. Have a nice evening!
Miss Wolfe We had a very busy, productive day! We started our day by studying this photograph, rehearsing what we noticed with our study buddy stuffie, then sharing with the class. Ask me to tell you what I notice about this ant. We read two texts today about ants. We will be comparing them more tomorrow, but we took time and noticed and talked about the text features in the non-fiction book. Ask me to tell you which book is non-fiction. National Geographic has really great non-fiction books for all age levels, but in the past ten years has really done a great job of publishing books for the youngest readers and learners. This Level 1 book is really at first or second grade reading level for most kids, but the interest level is great for kindergarten. We read part of it, stopping along the way to talk and study pictures and text features, then read the rest later. We also listened for verbs in the captions on one page. Ask me to listen as you read the captions, and I"ll name the verbs. We also read the book Hey, LIttle Ant. This book is a good book to talk about with your kinder. It has a good lesson. I will be sending it as part of our Wednesday Work and will share it as Read to Me, Talk to Me book, like we would do in the classroom if kids were borrowing books. You will have questions to use to guide your discussion with your child and a short "project" to do after, if you choose to. It's not a requirement, but we hope with Read to Me, Talk to Me that families will read the book a couple of times over the week and use the questions that are supplied to guide your discussion. When we are in the classroom, children bring their projects from the book to school and we hang them on a bulletin board, but if you just want to take a picture and send it in, I'll share it with the class. You have a week to do these projects, and as I said, I will include it with your Wednesday Work. We added another sound in Orton Gillingham today. We began to work with the short sound of a, which is why we were talking about ants! We will continue to work through our drills tomorrow with a, but we studied this picture to find words that started with a, or had short a in them. Ask me to name at least five things in the picture that start with or have short a in them. We had a lesson on calm-down strategies. We talked about ten different ways to calm down, and learned about them. One thing we did was listen to music. A great way to deal with stress, sadness, or just a good alternative to time-out is to put on headphones and listen to music. I think for me what works best is to listen to calming music. We listened to excerpts from different pieces to determine if the music made us calm, or riled us up. The kids did a really great job of identifying which, until the last piece! It's such a treat for me to get to see their faces up close and watch them respond and move to the music. We also talked about movement, and one thing I told them that I had read a lot about was hula hooping to relieve stress. If your child doesn't already have a hula hoop, for some kids this can be very calming, once they have learned to hula hoop. There are even weighted hula hoops that are supposed to be even better for relieving stress. I'll be supplying a list of these strategies for the Calm-Down Kit we are working on tomorrow that you can choose to print out. We also watched some Nature Relaxation videos. I'll post some of these in our Google classroom in the next day or two. I'm not sure if you are able to see what I post in there from YouTube, so please let me know if I post things in there you cannot access. Here is an example of a Nature Relaxation video. Have a nice evening!
Miss Wolfe We started our week with a Social/Emotional Learning lesson that focused on frustration. We studied these four photographs and talked about how they were they same and what feeling that showed. We talked about how the faces of the children, and the adult in one picture, looked and how their whole bodies even looked when they were feeling frustrated. Ask me to tell you about the word frustrated. Here's a short video we watched to understand the word frustrated more.
We talked about one thing we can do to help us when we feel frustrated. We got the "stress heart" out of our supply bag and talked about how squeezing that is a good way to relieve some stress. This week, we will be creating a Calm Down Kit. The children will need a shoe box or medium size gift or paper bag to decorate. They will also need things to decorate the box or bag with, such as construction paper, scrap pieces of wrapping paper, cotton balls, markers, magazines, etc. to decorate the box or bag. They do not need all those supplies, just some things to decorate it to make it special. These items will be used Wednesday afternoon to make a container to hold our Calm Down Kit Items. This kit will be something your child can use when they are feeling stressed, frustrated, mad, "wound up" with excitement, or sad. There will be other items in there, and a few things I would like you to print out to include, that can be used to calm down. I need a calm down kid too! In OG, we practiced our auditory drill as well as added the word like as a red word. We used the bumpy board and began to learn the drill for that, as well as reviewed the arm tapping to learn a new word. The kids are doing a great job learning these routines. I know space can be an issue, but having their materials for these exercises at their desk is important so we can move through them quickly. In Benchmark reading, we reviewed the text features side bar, caption and chapter title or heading. We wrote a caption together to go with two pictures. In math we looked for hidden partners in seven, practiced adding on one more, and showed the magnitude of numbers using the Rekenrek and moving our arms and bodies like we were going up and down on a rollercoaster. We practiced writing the number 7. We ended our day by reading a beautiful book called Layla's Happiness, by Mariahadessa E'Kere Tallie. This beautiful book is about what makes her happy. We read the book, then listened to identify verbs on some of the pages. Then we wrote an "I like" sentence that included a verb that told something we like to do. We had a great day, and I'm happy to say after several hours on the phone, a new gateway, paying Comcast more money for internet, and getting more holes in my wall, I think my internet is good now. Tomorrow I try out two computers online. Cross your fingers for smooth sailing! Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe Today we read an information book about school rules. We did a preview of the text first and looked at text features. I went through the text features to show the students what they were and to get them familiar with the name of them. We talked about the table of contents, bold print, headings, captions and labels. We also looked quickly at the glossary and index, but we will focus on the first set of text features for now. We also talked about how information books usually, but certainly not always, have photographs. We reviewed school rules, but the book was about school rules in school, so we talked about our online rules. We made a web to organize the rules we shared.
We practiced our red word am and did arm tapping. In Orton Gillingham, they use arm tapping for several reasons. First, usually the children will have the word written on paper that they will hold in their ""other" hand, not the hand they use to write. They take the hand they write with and cross their mid-line and tap from shoulder to hand saying each letter to spell the word, then they sweep their hand down their arm and say the word. We practiced this today with am as well as can for extra practice learning the drill. As more words and letters are added to our drills, and the children are more familiar, the drills will be faster. In math, we looked at counters in different formations to understand that just because they are moved around or farther apart, their quantity remains the same. This is a conservation task, but we also showed how many with math fingers so the children didn't recount. We are also working with subitizing so the children can look at a group of counters or dots and not have to count each one. Research shows that usually the children can see three or four easily, but then their number sense helps them to know the quantity with larger groups. Today we were spacing the counters out in parts of a work mat which is building that foundation for recognizing quantity without counting even when we are using quantities greater than four. Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe |
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February 2021
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