In Orton-Gillingham, we are working with the u sound. We looked at umbrellas today during our Picture Talk and chose the one that was our favorite. Then we turned and talked with partners giving an opinion about the best umbrella. We know that when we share or write an opinion we need to give support, so we told why we chose the umbrella. Then, we shared out to the whole group with a partner sharing what their partner said. We do this often to remind the children of how important it is to listen to others. Ask me to tell you which umbrella was my favorite and why.
We listened to the story, The Hat, by Jan Brett, today. This is such a beautifully illustrated book. We knew we had to listen carefully to the events in the story so we could retell the story in sequence. Today the children are bringing home a paper with the characters that were in each new event. Ask me to show you the characters and retell the story. We played some math games today to practice some skills we have been working on, and to practice playing by the rules and being fair. It's that time of the year in kindergarten where we have been having to do a lot of testing. Although we do have two big tests that we take on the computer, we also have many assessments that are done one-on-one. We are in the homestretch! This group works so nicely on their own so I can get through quite a few children while the class works on something on their own. Right now we are doing the Benchmark reading passages to determine see what strategies and skills the students are using, and to see what we can build on to make their reading more fluent. There is also a quick comprehension piece that goes along with the reading sample. One area I know we need more work on is reading the Red Words quickly, without stretching them out to say each sound. These words need to have automaticity in reading and spelling. We will begin to work more on the spelling of the words. I will be sending home a list of the words and sounds we have introduced so you can see which words they need more practice with. We sent home flashcards recently, and on this website under the curriculum tab you will see Reading. There are activities you can do with your child to practice the Red Words. Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe
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We studied these gentlemen this morning as an introduction to our Health mini-study of healthy eating. I'm not sure how appetizing these guys are! We looked at recreations of these paintings by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Ask me to tell you three reasons eating healthy is important. We did a shared writing to add an event to the story Ungalala that we have been reading. We decided on another animal that could be in the story. We made a human graph on our rug to decide which animal we would use in our event and decided to use the flamingo. We wanted to use interesting language to talk about how the flamingo moves, but we had some trouble with that. Visualizing didn't work because we didn't have enough background knowledge so we watched a quick video of some flamingos. This helped us decide on the event that we added to Ungalala. Ask me to tell you the story of Ungalala. The kids wanted you to see the clip I showed about flamingos. They really enjoyed the way this flock moved together! Have a nice evening!
Miss Wolfe It is so good to be back with the kids. It was a long day with no special, and with lunch in the classroom and indoor recess, so I was with the kids all day. That accounts for the three hour deep sleep I did after school instead of the half hour nap I planned when I got home! I really do enjoy the weeks when the children eat in the classroom, or in Miss Wolfe's Restaurant as I call it. We listen to fun music and try and have quiet conversations. Sometimes it gets a bit loud, but as always with music on in the classroom, I remind them that if they can't hear the music, they are too loud. We enjoyed some Disney Jazz today since Friday is Jazz Friday in our classroom. If you enjoy Dave Brubeck, or love Disney, Dave Digs Jazz is a great album!
We reviewed words with multiple meanings today. These words are homophones. We enjoyed the book Did You Say Pears, by Arlene Alda which is a book of photographs with witty text. We noticed the homophones but also used it as an opportunity to dig deeper into vocabulary. For example, we clarified the word "pairs" which many of the students didn't really understand. With vocabulary developement, children have often heard words but don't have a good working definition of the word. We have been working on vocabulary strategies such as using the context of the sentence to understand the words. I call the children Word Birds and use a bird graphic on the slide in the slideshow to remind the children that this is an important word in our content. In math, we have been writing numbers that come before and after a given number, and identifying words as more than or less than. We are also using the word "fewer:" when we talk about quantity. We can use the words "less than" when talking about the value of a number, and "fewer" when we are talking about quantity. It's a pet peeve of mine when I hear it used less used to describe quantity on tv, but I think I'm going to have to get over that! But it's important the children know this, especially since it comes up on the MAP P test. I am continuing to see reversals in writing numbers and in letters. We will continue to work on handwriting to address this. It is very common for children in kindergarten and first grade to reverse letters and numbers. The children brought home Read to Me, Talk to Me books today. Remember they can keep this book at home for a week so you can read it several times. Don't forget about the questions that are in the front or back of the book. These were written to support the curriculm and give you a focus as you read the book during the week. It's not necessary for your child to answer all the questions. I want this time to be enjoyable and to not feel like a quiz. We have one child in the class who does the class project each week, and several others who do them sometimes. I am moving the display for the projects in the classroom so we have more room for projects.. The projects are optional but encouraged. Have a great weekend and stay safe! Miss Wolfe We love photographs with a bird's eye view! We had a great time talking about what we noticed, and using what we know to determine this used to be a volcano. We saw many interesting things in this photograph, and you probably can see more on the computer than we saw on the big screen. Ask me to tell you what I noticed and what I wondered about this amazing crater. We had a long morning with a Benchmark interim test. Unfortunately the Benchmark website was having issues, as it was yesterday, but our persistent little learners made the best of it and showed their best effort.
In math today, we practiced measuring with links. We practiced on books first, then with stuffies that were all book characters. We drew A-MAZING drawings of the character we chose. Then we measured different parts of the stuffie and recorded it on our picture. We had a great time practicing measuring accurately! Have a great evening! Miss Wolfe Our picture talk today was about the Shenandoah River. Of course that meant I needed to sing that song, which I don't know all the words to anymore. The children enjoyed looking at this bird's eye view of this river, but did not enjoy my singing.
We worked with Red Words this morning. We practiced has and it. We are working to read and write these words automatically. We also practiced writing a couple sentences with the words. Then we put on music and practiced writing several tricky red words fluently; quickly and accurately. We reviewed pounding out syllables to find out how many. Interestingly, it always happens that the children want one syllable words to have more syllables so they try and break it apart into more parts. Otherwise, they are doing really well with counting syllables in words. We also are continuing to work with rhyming words. We will be reading lots of great rhyming books next week to really reinforce this. In math, we started working with weight. I introduced a balance scale today. We listened to a short story that illustrated how the balance scale works like a seesaw. Next week we will be having more practice in measurement using links to measure length, height and width, the balance scales to compare weights as well as using teddy bear counters to record weight, our sand table that has colored rice in it to work with capacity, and we will use Cuisennaire rods to play some games with measurement. Have a great weekend! Miss Wolfe We started our day by studying these beautiful creatures. We looked for how they are the same and how they are different. Then we read a short text about penguins. We were looking for the most important information in the text to answer the question: "What do Emperor penguins need?" Ask me to tell you what I learned. We know that studying the photographs or pictures in information texts is important and can help us understand more. We also know we can learn from short video clips. Below is a video clip from a DisneyNature movie called "Penguins." This amazing movie took four years to make. DisneyNature goes to different parts of the world to make these films. They do not interfere or stage any of the footage. They observe and film, and sometimes from all the observations they are able to predict what kinds of behavior they can see at different times, which helps in making the movies. This movie is on Disney+ if you haven't seen it. Please know that these films are nature films, so sometimes it might be a little scary but are such a great learning opportunity. The second clip below shows penguins swimming, which is something we wanted to learn about more. In math, we continued to work with measurement. We listened to a story and followed the directions to draw a picture. Ask me to show you my paper with the story the pirate told about his house.
We had a great day! Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe We started our day with by analyzing these five photographs. We looked at how they were the same, and how they were different. As I listened in on the discussions, it was clear they quickly identified these landforms as islands. We then tried to define what made them islands, which is a little trickier. I also overheard quite a discussion about whether the photograph on the right in the top row was a volcano or geyser. We have looked at both and had lively debates about which was which! We ended our discussion by sharing which island we would like to visit. Interestingly enough, the highly populated island seemed to be the most popular choice. The children do an amazing job of discussing the pictures we look at each day. They stick to the topic, include everyone, ask questions, and disagree respectfully, although sometimes a little loud! Ask me to tell you which island I would like to visit.
In reading, we read an information book with many text features. A couple reading groups have also read books with captions and labels. We are working hard to be sure to read those captions and labels and study the photographs or pictures in the book. This is important information that should not be skipped. Children need lots of exposure to these text features, and need to hear their name often so they remember it. We have talked about the table of contents, heading, bold print words, captions and labels. We have also used the glossary to learn more about words that we have heard but may need to know more about. The children really enjoy information books. In math we were comparing the length of objects in the room with a chain of links. We were making a chart that listed with pictures and labels what we found that was longer and shorter. Being able to communicate accurately in math is important and sometimes it's tricky when talking about measurement. Children want to use words such as big and little, but we need them to be more specific with the words they use. Length, height, compare and endpoints are words we are using right now when we are working with measurement. We had an evacuation drill today. This drill is when the children need to be farther away from the building. They did a good job of walking up the hill and waiting quietly. Down the hill was trickier but no one rolled down! As always, I'm really proud of this group. Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe We had a busy day! We got right to work with the letter p. I have been waiting for this letter for so long so I could read the kids Potato Pants, by Laurie Keller. I was so excited that I left the book at home, but we listened to it on YouTube. This is a very funny book about a potato who has a lot of strong feelings. Ask me to tell you about Potato Pants.
We had an Earthquake Drill this afternoon. We were just starting to play, and I was getting ready to pass out Read to Me, Talk to Me books. We will have to do that tomorrow because we did the drill, but hadn't watched the video about what to do. Ms. Lillis came in to let us know how to go under a table, get down low and cover our head and neck as much as possible, grab on to a leg of a table, and to face away from the windows. The kids did a great job staying quiet and following directions. We are starting measurement in Math. We worked with tall and short today, and talked about what a skyscraper is. We will continue to have geometric shapes out to work with during math station time since it was such a short unit, but we will also have measurement activities out as well. If we had to reschedule our conference, or if did not sign up for one or missed yours, please sign up on the Sign Up Genius I am sending out this evening. I'm anxious to let you know what a great job your child is doing in school. The kids are really working hard. They are so pleasant and kind to each other. The best part of this class is how they help each other and stick together! Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe We can't get enough llama shorts! We practiced retelling and noting key events in this video. Ask me to tell you what the problem was that got this story started! Enjoy the video! The children really enjoy the Brain Breaks! The dance party videos give the children extra practice in following directions and in movement and balance. They definitely have their favorites! Ask me to tell you my favorite Brain Break dance video. We combined fine motor practice, counting and decorating our l all into one activity! The children were given a partial sheet of leaf stickers, and as we listened to Autumn from the Four Seasons by Vivaldi, the children took the stickers off quickly and placed them on their l. We were trying to see how fast they could go with peeling the little stickers off. We also counted how many stickers we got on the l. The kids really enjoyed this! Have a nice evening!
Miss Wolfe We listened to a great story, told by a little dog named Plum, that had an important lesson to share. The book is called Love is My Favorite Thing, and it's written by Emma Chichester Clark. This story is about a little dog that is still learning self-control. He knows what he shouldn't do, but he has a hard time stopping himself. He is loved by his owners, and the neighbor children, so when he makes the wrong choice, he is very sad because he knows he has let them down. Ask me to tell you about some of the events in the book when Plum did not make a good choice. The story ends with Plum's owners telling her they will always love her, even when she makes mistakes. What a reassuring message for children to hear! Today we wrote thinking bubbles to show what a character in the story School Rules was thinking. We are going to be doing more writing to build confidence. Even though I modeled exactly what to do and children told me what they were going to write, very few of them did the writing. They turned in their writing paper without writing on it. They had to go back and do it before they could go play this afternoon. We are going to work on putting down the sounds we hear and not worrying about the spelling. The only words they should spell are the Red Words we have learned so far. We are going to practice stretching out words and do daily practice writing a sentence or two. In math, we continued working with numbers. The children today were using ten frames, to show numbers, learn about odd and even numbers, and to recognize five and some more to make larger numbers. We also played a fun counting game. The kids can count, but had a difficult time because they weren't looking at and listening to each other, and some were not speaking to be heard. We will play the game again tomorrow to try and beat our score. Quite simply, the game was just counting to ten. We sat around the edge of the carpet and each child said one number. The child who said ten had to stand and didn't count on anymore. I turned over our five minute sand timer, and we tried to get ten people standing by the time the sand ran out. We got eight, which was a great start for the first time. We will play again tomorrow to see if we can get more friends standing. Today during Talk Time, we watched another short. This thrilling short is filled with action and a few moments that caused us to gasp! We practiced retelling with our partners. We thought abhout what got the story started, ;the action that happened in the middle of the story, and the surprise ending! Ask me to retell the story, then watch it again with me! Have a nice eveining!
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June 2022
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