October 14, 2016

Hi Fish Families!

Here is a glimpse into our week in the fish class:

Readers' Workshop:  Our work this week has been around storybooks. We are using familiar stories to look at the pictures, remember, and read! (The children are using their own words to tell the stories using the pictures as guides.) We are working hard to make sure the words we "read" match the page we are on. 

Writers' Workshop: This week each student kept a piece of writing or 2 to continue working on and I added the rest of them to a writing file. The folders were getting so full of writing that we needed to clean them out! We are using writing partners to make our pieces even better! We are beginning to teach the children how to ask and answer questions to add more to our writing. Revision is an important part of the writing process and we are beginning to attempt it in kindergarten! Many of the "edits" this week were around adding more color and details to the writing pieces. Some children even labeled their pictures to help a reader understand the piece more. 

Literacy Centers:  We have been working on our "spelling" sorts. This word work is the beginning stage that will lead to word study work. All of the children have been doing concept sorts (shapes, animal/not an animal). Beginning next week, the children will be matched to sorts that meet them where they are as writers. Some children will continue with concept sorts, some will be sorting pictures by their initial sound, and others will begin sorts with short vowel sounds (word families). We continue to play rhyming games, sort objects by beginning sounds, read books with our sight word in it and do other fun activities reinforcing our phonics, handwriting, and sight word work. 

Math Workshop:  This week we worked on sorting. The children learned the math vocabulary attributes, same, different, group and sort. I will get some pictures into FLICKR next week! 

We also continue to work with ten frames and forming sets of object within 10.

Visual Arts: We finished our monster sun catchers this week and have been creating Halloween themed things with playdough. The children also finished up a Sparky the Fire Dog art project. 

Some Books We Read: Kitten's First Full Moon, There Was an Old Monster!, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Pumpkin Pumpkin, 

Apps We Used:  Number Sense (HD)

Donation Requests: Rice for our texture table 

Up-Coming Events:

• Word of the Week- see
• Handwriting- H & K
• Lively Letters-th
• Halloween Celebration-10/28 
• Early Release Days- 10/26 & 11/2 *Parent/Teacher Conference Days
• No School (Teacher In-Service Day)-11/8
• No School-11/11 

Fondly,

Kristen