What's Up with Writing

We have started our writing workshop, and I am thrilled about our progress so far!  The best part is I think the students are more excited than I am.  They love writing time, and anyone can tell during our writing time that they are so eager to learn!

First we learned what writers do:

Then we learned that writers know that "when we are done we have just begun!"  We can . . .

We worked on adding details to our writing by really thinking about the details of our story.  We worked hard to add details to our writing.  Together we wrote a piece about our playground.

We're learning how to listen to the sounds of the words we are saying and write the letter that makes the sound.  First we practiced with labels, and then we wrote words and sentences.

Sometimes it is hard to think of something to write about.  Right now, we're focusing on writing about things we know a lot about, but writers can write about anything!

It was so fun to write pieces with  more than one page!  I'm impressed with how much these writers are able to share on one topic! We shared with our writing partners ideas on what else we can add to our writing.

Some of us even got to put covers on our pieces to make sure they looked like a published book!

We've learned a lot about how writers get started, persevere, and practice their craft.  In the future we'll dive deeper into narrative writing, informational writing, and opinion writing.

Unit 1 Vocabulary

Our big question for the past two weeks:  What happens at school?  We were able to learn and discuss some important words that go along with school.  Our words for the unit are learn, share, friend, read, building, class, room, and schedule.

What do we want to learn?

What can we share?  What can't we share?

How can we be a friend?

Finally, we love to read.  Check out our video:

Working with Pattern Blocks

Always a favorite activity--it's pattern blocks!  There are so many ways to learn about math with pattern blocks.  Last week we had two days to explore, create, and learn with them.  Take a look!

First we made patterns with the pattern blocks.  We're going to continue working on patterns this week, too.

Then we sorted the pattern blocks.  Most of the students sorted by color or shape, but we were able to get to sorting by number of sides and more.

I introduced symmetry during our exploration time.  Check out what some of use did:

It was fun to just play, explore, and create with the pattern blocks as well.  

Sorry I wasn't able to capture everyone's creations on camera.  They all did a nice job.  We'll be using pattern blocks all year, so stay tuned to see what else we can do!

What We're Learning: Letters, Sounds, and Social Studies

We have finished two more weeks of kindergarten, and we have been busy!

We're not just learning about letters, but we're learning that letters make sounds, too.  So far, we've learned 14 letters and their sounds!  Ask your child about the sounds these letters make:  a, t, b, l, f, h, p, s, u, m, r, c, g, and i.  In addition, we've been learning how to write some capital letters. So far we've practiced the "frog jump" capitals which are F, E, D, P, B, and R.  Ask your child where we start our letters, and see if they can remember why those letters are "frog jump" capitals. One of the things that these letters have in common is that they all have a straight back.  We went on a hunt to find letters that have a straight line in them.

We've been learning how to get along with others, too.  We've learned that we have to listen, talk, take turns, and make good choices when making friends. Working on knowing how to listen has been a big focus. We talk about having a whole body that listens with not just ears, but we want to show the speaker that we're looking at him or her with our eyes. Also, we want to keep our feet and hands still and our mouth quiet.

Most importantly, we want to know what the speaker has to say!  When it's our turn to talk, we want to make sure our voices are the right size (or volume) for the conversation.  We practiced when it was time to talk and when it was time to listen.

Then we learned about the importance of having class rules and taking turns.  Here we are with our class dragon taking turns:

We made a list of the times where we should take turns in school:

We've learned how to behave, or maybe what not to do, from two of our favorite characters:  David and Pigeon.  Here are the big ideas we came up with from their stories:

Here is what we thought when we talked about making good choices:

Speaking of making good choices, we talked about a way to be proactive is to make the choice to do the thing that needs to be completed:

Finally we made a promise to remember to get along with others:

Stay tuned for updates in both reading and math!

Week in Review

It's been a great first week of school!  I think that can sometimes be easy for a teacher to say, but I truly mean it. I do have one disappointment, however--I didn't get a chance to take many pictures!

One of the things we've worked on this week is learning how to behave in school.  We read several stories to help us figure out some class rules. One of the stories was about a monster coming to school.  That brought us to talking about what things we can do at school, and what things we shouldn't do at school.  We've been calling it "above the line" and "below the line."  That discussion evolved into our management system.  I'll be talking more about the management system in this class at Meet the Teacher.  We read No, David! written by David Shannon, and we learned that it's never too late to start making good choices.  We enjoyed reading Don't Let the Pigeon Ride the Bus by Mo Willems, too.  What did we learn from Pigeon?  "No" means "no" no matter what.  Ask your child to tell you what Pigeon did to try and get his way.

Although the students seemed to enjoy reading about David and Pigeon, the favorite book of the week was Press Here written by Herve Tullet.  We had such a good team-building experience interacting with the book, and I want the students to know how enjoyable a book can be.

We talked about three letters this week:  A, T, and B.  See if your child can tell you the sounds of those three letters.  We learned how to read three words, too!  Red, yellow, and blue are three words we can read, thanks to some songs that are teaching us the color words.  We've been working on learning the days of the week and the months of the year, and specifically what day is which and what month it is.  We've been counting as well.

Lastly, we have learned about squares and rectangles this week,.  Boy, am I impressed with what they students already knew and what new observations they made.  Below is a picture of a Thinking Map we made as a class to show how a square and a rectangle are the same and different.  Thinking Maps are organizers to visually show thinking.  We'll be using Thinking Maps all year.  I'll share more about what we're doing with shapes next week!

I didn't get many pictures (boo!), but here are the few that I did get of us working in action!

Hopefully I'll get to take more pictures next week!