Super Readers have Pointer Power and Bring Books to Life

Last week I began Reader's Workshop by telling the class how genuinely proud I am at how hard they've been working on applying strategies to figure out new words.  As a class we invoke "Eagle Eyes", "Lips the Fish", "Stretchy the Snake" and "Tryin' Lion" all the time.  These are all important strategies that readers can do on their own BUT... when you team up (like a super reading duo) you can be even more powerful.  And that's where using Pointer Power with a partner comes in because two heads are often better than one!  One partner point and the other reads.  The pointer can't move on until their partner reads the word but they can help! Check it out:

Remembering back to Old Favorites, Frog and Toad now live among them as many children have heard them several times, are now reading them and have even seen the stories dramatized on stage at the Flynn.  Logically then, the next step was to retell the stories ourselves with the help of some puppets.  Have a look:

Our Friendship Ambassadors...Frog and Toad

This week began with a Valentine's celebration of friendship in the classroom and ended with a field trip to the Flynn to see one of the most friendships in children's literature (Frog and Toad) play out on stage. Both were a huge success and I want to express a big thank you to you, the parents, for helping making both happen.  One classmate said that our "friendship salad" was the best fruit salad he had ever had! And, the best thing about exchanging cards is that the children experience happiness brought about by simply writing, reading and giving.  Enjoy a look.

Happy 100th Day!

100 days in Kindergarten is a milestone and certainly a reason to celebrate! We marked the occasion with a K-1 parade that ended with a free-form dance party in the gym.  Here's a look at the children creating headbands with 100 tallies and necklaces with 100 pieces of cereal.  And, in the spirit of Gerald and Piggie, even our superstar sentence station has taken on a positive feeling of success- check out the sentence that was created.  In case it's too small to see it says "Today I will fly".

Full Speed Ahead!

In considering this post, there is so much I could say!  I skipped a week of blogging due to report cards and I think it's best to catch you up on all fronts.  Below I'll offer a little look at some literacy work- two friends writing their own Elephant and Piggie stories for fun, some math work- finding patterns in pictures and numbers, some explore time creations- a block aquarium and playdough "baked goods", a look at our recent Farm to School lesson, and lastly, learning about loons at James' Candle Day.  Make sure to scroll all the way through.  

Above you can see students using Mo Willem's Elephant and Piggie books as "references" for spelling the words they need for their own E and P stories.  Thanks for the inspiration Mo!   There was a recent article about him in the New Yorker Magazine- check it out

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/06/mo-willems-funny-failures?mbid=social_twitter

The focus that students are bringing to both their writing and their math is evident in the photos!

Explore time is SO important for us!  Allowing the children time to be self-directed with open ended materials, playmates and imagination is VERY VALUABLE.  It's how they learn from one another.

Here we are learning about sweet potatoes- how they grow, how to cook with them and what they taste like.  This Farm to School lesson took place in the classroom and the cafeteria.

And below you can see highlights from a recent Candle Day.  We learned a little bit more about a one of our friends and little bit of science about Loons- fantastic!

Let's Hear It For Games!

Thanks to all of you, this month's sharing theme of games- the non electronic type, has been a huge hit!  The children have done an outstanding job of presenting their game, explaining the rules and then making it available to play with their friends at Explore time. I'm very impressed with this crew's turn taking abilities and their willingness to include others.  From the very beginning of the month we established that if a game had had four players and a fifth child wanted to join you could say, "sure, you can be on my team" or "this round is full but you can watch".  And this group really does it!  We've learned some cool new (to me) games and relearned some old stand by's.  Here's a look at in in action including a look at Friday's math game- Grab Bag 10.  In this game students take turns taking a handful of cubes out of a bag and spilling them on a 10 frame.  They then arrange them pair wise to see if every cube has a pair (it's an even number) or if there is an odd-cube-out (it's an odd number.  Last, they record the number on a white board noting if its odd or even.  The big aha...even numbers are doubles!

Finding New Strategies and Patterns

As you know Gerald and Piggie have been making the children laugh and motivating them to put their new found decoding strategies to the test.  We've been talking about: getting our lips ready to make the first sound of the word, stretching out the word to articulate all the sounds, skipping a hard word to see if you can figure it out from the words around it and checking to see if you what you read makes sense.  Lucky for us, Mo Willem's humor makes all of this a ton of fun!

 

In Math we've been working on seeing patterns as a strategy to predict what comes next in a series of numbers.  Using bikes and wheels as our example we teased out the concept of doubling (1 bike, two wheels- 2 bikes, 4 wheels etc.) and then made some observations about how counting by 2's could be a way to predict what would come next in our growing pattern. A careful look at the sticky notes and the white chart on the right will let you see the children's thinking about doubling and counting by 2's.

Happy New Year!

We had a lot of fun this week simply being back together!  Here is a look at the watercolor art that accompanied our January calendars.

As you may have read in the newsletter, Gerald and Piggie (the main characters in Mo Willem's brilliant beginning reader series) were an especially important part of our learning.  As we read more and more of their adventures, the children will be recording their favorite Gerald and Piggie quotes to create a new display in the hallway outside out classroom. These books are incredibly powerful in motivating young readers to tackle new words.

Here is a look at a number bond (also mentioned in the newsletter).

The children are enjoying this new way of representing addition equations.  Number bonds have become a regular component in our daily Number Corner routine.