October 23, 2015

Hi Fish Families!

I put our fire safety pictures on our blog. They can be found under the FLICKR tab at the top of our home page. 

Readers' Workshop:  The children have been practicing using familiar books to do a quick retell using linking phrases like 'and then' to put all the pages together.  They used small Post It notes to put "pinches of themselves" into their books. This fosters making connections and thinking about what a reader is reading. The fish children are marking pages they like and telling their reading partner why they like it. They are also making connections to other books, songs, and life in general. I am proud of the thinking and talking they are doing with books.

Writers' Workshop:  Our big focus this week was how writers ask and answer questions to add more to their writing. Most of this work was done in partnerships. The children asked each other 'who,when, what, why, where and how' questions to help make our pieces the best they can be. We are also stretching out words to write the sounds we hear. 

Literacy Centers: We wrote a class book inspired by the book Yuck Soup. We worked on the sight word see this week. The children loved searching for the letters s,e,e in our texture table and building the word. We used the app LetterSchool and various other activities to practice the correct formation of the letters H and K.
Math Workshop: We finished Unit #2! I am in the middle of assessing the children and will be sending home the information next week. This week, we spent a lot of time acting out and representing number stories using drawings, manipulatives and our fingers. We are solving oral equations using addition and subtraction (K.OA.2). We had a chance to play lots of games reviewing 1-1 correspondence when counting, showing '1 more' and representing numbers with dots on a ten frame.

Visual Arts: We made sparkling bats and did a monster draw along. The children made Sparky the fire dog, too. 

Social Studies:  Mrs. Griffith showed a video and taught the children about personal body safety. Some key points made were:

• You own your body
• If someone tries to touch you in a spot that would be covered by your bathing suit you should yell no, get away, and tell an adult
• Secrets that make you feel uncomfortable aren't good secrets and you should tell an adult right away

Some Books We Read: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See?, Silly Sally, and Go Away, Big Green Monster!

Up-Coming Events:

• Halloween Celebration- 10/30
• Early Releases- 11/5 & 11/18 *Parent Teacher Conferences 
• No School- 11/6 *Teacher Workshop
• No School- 11/11 *Veterans' Day
• Thanksgiving Break- 11/25-11/27
• Word of the Week-an
• Phonics- o
• Handwriting- L and U

Fondly,

Kristen