Ask Me About Thursday, September 15, 2016

Today we had a visit from Mrs. Kanter, our school counselor.  She will be coming in to our class from time to time to teach lessons.  Her lesson today was about her job and what she does.  She reminded the children of where her office is, and will be giving them more information soon about what to do if they need to talk to her. We are so fortunate to have Mrs. Kanter as our counselor!

We also had a class meeting today.  We will meet as a class to celebrate progress and kindness, as well as talk about concerns or problems.  We begin our meeting by passing the Talking Fish around to give children an opportunity to compliment or thank any of their classmates for something specific.  This is difficult at first, but as they see other students doing it they will become more comfortable in participating.  We talked about how things were going at recess and if everyone had someone to play with today.  Most children did, but we also found out that some children go right to the buddy bench instead of going to where they want to play.  When they do that, and they will have a difficult time finding someone who is on the back playground because they can't see the buddy bench from there.  We talked about going to where you want to play first to find a friend, or to decide before going outside where you want to meet a friend.  From what I am hearing from the children, recess is going well!

Today I introduced a new tool for writers in Writing Workshop.  We learned how to use a stretchy snake to remind ourselves to slowly say the word we are trying to spell so we can hear all the sounds in the word.  The children know the stretchy snake is a tool, not a toy, and that if they are using it as a toy, the snake will be put in a bucket.  Each child has a snake they can use, but it's really just a hook to get kids to slowly say the word to hear the sounds.  After a while, they become less interested in using the snake and just know to stretch out the words.  

It was good to see almost everyone come out for Back to School Night.  I have two volunteers for room parents.  I will be turning the names in to the PTA tomorrow, so anyone who still is interested just needs to e-mail me and I will add your name to the list!  This is for room parents who are interested in organizing the two parties we have during the school year.

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe