We continued to work with short e today in our Orton Gillingham work.  Short e is a difficult sound for many students.  The motion we make for this sound is to put our thumb and pointer finger together and spread them apart in front of our lips.  We also worked with the red word get.

In Benchmark, we re-read an information book called What Do Animals Need?  This book tells what animals need to survive and why.  The first time we read it, we focused on the things they need.  The book clearly shows and tells what animals need in photographs, headings, and in the text.  Today, we focused on a little more challenging task, and that was to find out the reason they need these things to survive.

We also read an information book about elephants.  This book is a fun book to read because if read at home with a family member, there is a parent for an adult, and a part of a child to read.  Some of our friends could read both parts, so I was able to have a lot of help reading this book!  I assigned it in Epic, but you will need to read it just before school, after school, or Wednesday afternoon since Epic is only available for free during school hours.  We read a few chapters from the book, but not all.  The book is called National Geographic Readers: Elephants, and it is a You Read, I Read book.  If you like this book and enjoy reading with your child in that format, you might look for other books that National Geographic has that are the same format.  Ask me to show your my Doodle Notebook so I can show you what I learned about elephants today!

We continued to work with number bonds.  We used our two-sided chips to shake and spill to find different ways to show 7.

We will be reading this book again and probably a third time, but I wanted to share a truly exceptional book with you.  It's called Milo Imagines the World, by Matt de la Pena.  There are several great life lessons in this book, and it's a book that needs to be read many times at different times in children's lives.  This is definitely one for the family bookshelf.  I'm attaching a video of the author reading the story, but this is a book to snuggle up together and read, stopping to talk along the way the second, and subsequent times you read it.  Today, we really just took in the plot of what was happening in the story.  We will dive in a little deeper the next time we read it and talk more about what Milo was imagining and why.  It was great to see Milo doodling about the world around him, and what he was imagining, and how what he imagined wasn't necessarily reality.  I can't say enough about this book!   

We will be taking a Benchmark test tomorrow.  The children should be able to log on by themselves, and will be able to take the test on their own.  Our reading specialist, Mrs. Abramson, will be helping out.  Hopefully then, we can't move on with learning and not so much testing!

Have a great evening!
​Miss Wolfe

Today we worked with the r sound.  We also added the words he and me to our red word collection.  In Benchmark, we compared two texts.  We looked at how the content was the same and different as well as the text features.

In math, we did a sprint.  Sprints are used in the Eureka math series to help kids work at a little quicker pace.  The beginning of the sprint is usually easier, and the problems become a little harder as the sprint goes on, just like in a real sprint.  We don't have many of these in kindergarten, but we try to establish the routine of a sprint.  We start at the same time, then when the teacher says stop, draw a line to show where they stopped.  We grade the sprint together.  Then, in usually in other grade levels, they repeat the sprint, trying to get a few more problems done. It's not graded except by the child as we go over it together, but it's not for a grade.  Today they were writing the missing number in a sequence of numbers to five.  It got harder when they made the sequence in reverse from 5 to 0. 

We made a connection to our new sound, r, to robots.  We read an information book at robots  that work in space.  At the end of the day, when we were all done, we read a beautiful book called The Robot and the Bluebird, by David Lucas.  This book is about an old robot who is no longer used.  He befriends and takes care of a bluebird.  Ask me to tell you what happens.  We also had time for a quick Pete the Cat book called Robo Pete, by James Dean.  This is a fun book about Pete the Cat creating his own robot.  But things don't go the way he planned.  We will be talking more about this story and writing our own stories about a robot tomorrow.

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

We are moving right along in our Orton Gillingham program.  Today we worked with the blending board to read real and nonsense words.  We have so many letters to work with now!  We are reading mostly three letter words during this time, but some four letter words when we use ch in the word.  We say each sound then blend them together to read the word.  The children give a thumbs up if it is a real word, and a thumbs down if it is a nonsense word.  We also worked with a new red word.  We worked with the word big.  We wrote the word several times on our house paper, trying hard to be sure our letters are in the right place.  The b is in the downstairs and upstairs, the i is downstairs, and the g is in the downstairs and the monkey tail hangs down into the basement.  That's tricky for some of the children, but we will continue to work on that!  
In Benchmark, we read a poem and identified rhyming words, and worked with text importance.  We identified the important parts of the poem about growing plants in a garden.  Understanding the most important parts in a text is still tricky for kindergarteners, but we will continue to work with that throughout the year.  We also worked with an important vocabulary word to use when talking and writing about plants.  We talked about the word sprout.  We studied some photographs that showed what a sprout is, and talked about how the word can be a verb or a noun.  Ask me to show you my Doodle Notebook.  You will see that I doodled b's and drew pictures of a bean sprouting.
I showed the children a short video of a time lapse of a mung bean seed sprouting.  The children really enjoyed watching this video.  I'll include it below!

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

We had a great Monday morning!  We worked with the letter b in Orton Gillingham.  In Benchmark reading we looked again at labels and how they can help us learn more as we read.  We read a short book about bees and looked at the photographs and labels.  It was great to take turns reading so I didn't do all the reading!
In writing, we wrote narratives.  The children could pick their own topic.  We brainstormed first, then planned out our story.  We rehearsed it with a study buddy.  We talked again about putting spaces between words, using complete sentences, and using a capital I when using the word I in a sentence, not just at the beginning of a sentence.  Most of the kids worked the whole time on their writing.  They are writing more sentences now.  Their illustrations, just with pencil or Flair marker, have more details in them.  Some of the children didn't work the whole time and were reading instead while I was working with reading groups.  I have stressed the importance of working the whole time.  In writing, they can also fix up their writing, add to it, or add more details.  Although I love that they love to read, it's important they show their best effort and build writing stamina.  They have a lot of freedom in virtual learning, and sometimes they take full advantage of that!  I know it's hard, but I know they can do this.  You can ask them to see their writing, or most of them posted it to Seesaw.  If they did not get it on Seesaw, could you please give them a hand in taking a picture so that I can read it and give them feedback.  Thanks!
In math, we are working with composition and decomposition of numbers.  We worked with number bonds today.  We noticed how the whole group is in the circle with two lines, or paths, leading to two other circles.  
We also had a really fun read aloud.  It was called Bee-Bim Bop, by Linda Sue Park.  This book is so lyrical and fun to read.  It shows a family working together to make dinner.  I've included the story below along with the slides we used to changed the words in Bee-Bim Bop to practice saying each sound, then blending it, then putting it in a sentence.  Ask me to read some of the Bee-Bim Bop word play slides with you.