Word Study

This week we started our differentiated Words Their Way groups. We have groups focusing on various consonant sounds, vowel sounds and digraph sounds. Wish us luck! It's always a challenge starting something new in a classroom but I am confident the kids are ready to take this next step in their learning.

Eric Carle Unit

Our Eric Carle Unit is going very well. We are starting our second week. We had to take a week off to focus on Thanksgiving but we are back on track. Thus far, we have read excellent literature and focused on two main comprehension strategies.

Week One: Wonderings
Having children wonder while reading is vital to their comprehension as it it the basis for asking questions. Asking questions helps clarify and deepen understanding. Many times it encourages and enhances imagination as children will often put themselves in the story and wonder "What would it be like if I could climb to the moon?"
Our focus books for this unit were:

• Do You Want to Be My Friend?
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Week Two: Making Connections
There are three types of connections we teach children: Text to Self, Text to Text and Text to World. When you make a connection while reading, it basically means that what you're reading reminds you of something else. This is a big clue that you are making meaning or understanding the book. For example, in our book,Does A Kangaroo Have a Mother Too?, many of the students recollected times with their own mothers. We primarily focused on Text to Self connections where students shared out how parts of the stories reminded them of things in their own lives. Our focus books were:

• Does A Kangaroo Have a Mother Too?
• Pancakes, Pancakes!
• I Will Never, Not Ever, Eat a Tomato by Lauren Child (Not an Eric Carle book, but excellent story!)

Classroom Meetings

Weekly class meetings are an essential part of kindergarten instruction.  Usually the topics have to deal with social situations. This past week, we discussed what it means to be a good friend. I had the kids brainstorm what it means to be a good friend. Children shared with partners nice things they do for their friends. Then they shared out and we wrote examples on the board. We also shared things we should not do to our friends.

Shape Cities

The past month, we've been learning about shapes. We did shape hunts in the classroom, made a shape book and have practiced drawing shapes. As a fun activity to wrap up our shape unit, we made shape cities! We used the four main shapes we learned about (circle, square, rectangle and triangle) to create a city skyline at sunset. We used black paper for the buildings to create the illusion of silhouettes. We used colored paper for the windows and doors. We also experimented with mixing paints to create a beautiful sunset. It was a fun project!

Apples!

It's apple time! With apple season, there are always plenty of fun projects going on in kindergarten classrooms. We started our learning about apples by learning about Johnny Appleseed. In our writing center, we talked about character traits and the traits that Johnny Appleseed had. He was kind, giving and loved animals. We also made apple books and made beautiful apples for our classroom window. We will continue our learning next week so stay tuned...

Sort, Sort, Sort

We have survived the first month of school! It has definitely been a month of adjusting and learning. As we dive into our curriculum, one of the routines I introduced this past week is sorting.  
We have started early concept and shape sorting activities that will be followed with picture sorts that develop phonemic awareness and include activities for rhyming, syllabication, and sound play. The purpose of these activities is to get our students used to these procedures so they are prepared for their individualized program.

How Many Dinosaurs Do You See?

On Friday, I posed the following question to the class: You are swimming underwater in a lake and see dinosaur feet in the water. You don't want to go to the surface in case they are not friendly dinosaurs. How many dinosaurs are standing in the lake?

Prior to asking them this question, I wanted to tap into their background knowledge to ensure that they knew what dinosaurs were. I read them the story, How Do Dinosaurs Go To School and then showed them various pictures of dinosaurs. While looking at the pictures, I had the kids observe how many legs each dinosaur had, what they looked like, if they looked like a meat eater etc.

I then projected the question onto the screen and had the kids look at the picture to the problem. The picture showed eight dinosaur feet. I then opened it up for discussion. Kids went up one by one to explain how many dinosaurs they thought there were and why. A few of the kids got into a debate about why their answer was the correct one citing "bone structure" and "leg curvatures" to justify their reasoning. :)

The Common Core State Standards for Math focuses on these 8 Standards for Mathematical Practice in addition to specific grade level standards. I encourage you to read them and reflect on what standards for mathematical practice you think were addressed by the kids solving this problem. How many dinosaurs do you think there are? I think there are 8...all posing like ballerinas on one foot. ;)