Ask me about tuesday, october 20, 2020

We had a great morning!  We made sure our learning space was ready and removed distractors.  We went to breakout rooms and talked about favorite book characters.  Children were taking turns and listening to others.  When we came back to the main room, I asked children to share what they heard others say.  I was so happy to hear so many children able to tell me what other children in their room said, so they were showing that they listened to others and many remembered the names of the children they heard.  The children also are learning to show a thumbs up when they have the same idea or answer instead of unmuting and saying that.  We do that in the classroom as well.  We are also working on piggybacking on what other children say, so we add on and don't repeat what someone else said.  That is a skill that will develop throughout the year..

We worked with /g/ again in Orton Gillingham, and worked with the word go.  We are working toward automaticity so the sounds and words are remembered, named, read and spelled without stopping to think about it.  The kids are doing so well with the OG routines.  They know where their supplies are and get them out fairly quickly and put them away where they belong quickly too!  

In math, we worked with adding one more to a number.  We listened to the Eric Carle story Rooster's Off to See the World.  This book has a staircase of animals building in the upper corner of the page that goes with the story.  We worked with staircases in math, looking at how adding on one builds the steps.  I modeled with connecting cubes and your child can do this as well if they go to our Google Classroom and go to our stream.  You will see a link to Unifix cubes.  This is a tool children can explore and build their own staircase.  They can make patterns and just explore number concepts with these cubes.  

The afternoon was a bit bumpy.  Once in reading groups, the kids did great.  I showed the children the papers I expected them to do before I took groups in to break out rooms.  I modeled what to do on each paper.  I told them if they finished their work, they were to read books.  I would like them to have 3 or 4 books they can read or look at when they finish their work.  I have a second computer set up and what I saw was discouraging, but part of learning.  In the classroom I would be working with them to stay on task, work quietly, and not play around with their supplies.  That's part of learning to be part of our learning community.  The same thing is happening online, but they have a greater selection of distractors because they are at home.  I came back to a very loud room.  I had to raise my voice to get them to hear me to settle down.  I'm sorry for this and I hope it doesn't interrupt your work.  I don't want the children to turn off their video because I feel responsible for their safety and their attention to their work.  I don't want to just always send them to play games online because I know they discover other games that may be more exciting for them then the skill I am giving them practice on.  We will be using our Google classroom soon, as well as See Saw where they can submit work on their own and send me a video with their explanation.  But it's still important that we work on building their self-control and focus to get their work done.  I know each day we will get better at this, and I still love them all dearly.  They are a very sweet class, and I am so lucky to be working with them! 

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe