Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Look Who's In Mrs Miller's Room! If you check the hall outside our door, you will see the children's coconut trees complete with their names spelled out in foam letters. They made these with Mrs. B during workstation/center time. I spent workstation time doing beginning assessments to learn who needs to be working on what when I begin small group instruction.
We started writer's workshop, but have not done any actual writing yet. We learned there are four things we can do during writer's workshop: think, draw, write, read. We spent writing time sharing things about ourselves like our favorite foods and what we like to do after school. This helps us get to know one another and will help us later when we have to think of things to write about.
During reading we listened to lots of ABC books including a riddle book that everyone enjoyed called It Begins With A. We added the emergent reader School to our book boxes and built up to four minutes of read to self time. We also took several sentences, read them together, cut the words apart, and reassembled the words.
In math, we worked on sorting objects by size, shape, and color.
Next week's theme is colors.
We made it through the first three days. We spent lots of time learning procedures and routines.
We are learning all the PBIS procedures that everyone in the school will follow and our classroom procedures, too. Hallways, group bathrooms, and the first ten minutes of lunch are Zone 0. Zone 0 means no talking. That no talking thing is really tough on kinders, but they did an amazing job. Especially at lunch. We encourage them to eat first and then have quiet conversation. We are trying to use the group bathrooms several times a day. With 27 students, just getting a drink from the water fountain seems to take forever and bathroom breaks take even longer, but both are necessary!
This class seems to really like music and movement activities. "The Cowboy Song" and "Party in the Jungle" are already two favorites. We read lots of stories about Chester the raccoon. We learned that our schema is our background knowledge, everything that is in our brains. Our schema helps us understand what we read. We shared our schema for raccoons. We also learned our first reading strategy - Eagle Eye. We know to look at the pictures to help us figure out the words. We used this strategy during Read to Self time. During Read to Self time, each student reads by himself from his book box. Right now we are reading for three minutes, but we will be able to read longer as we build our stamina.
The children enjoyed calendar and games on the Smartboard. The Smartboard is a new thing for me, so we are learning about it together. The children also really liked center or workstation time. Housekeeping, moon sand, computers and drawing were favorite workstations.
I am looking forward to reading alphabet books next week. Hope everyone gets a good night's sleep and is ready for a full week! Smiles!
