Our class needs play dough and clay for Daily 5 and sidewalk chalk for outside recess. If you can donate something to our classroom that would be great. Thank you!
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We have been busy reading about apples. We have learned about the different seasons of the apple tree and we have looked at the life cycle of an apple. One of the main questions that students are wanting to explore is why do apples turn brown? I would like to give students the opportunity to try to make their apple stay fresh (or white). Please bring in an apple/apples for our class this week. We will be looking at the lines of an apple and water coloring our still life pictures and we will also be trying out different things to see if we can prolong our apples from becoming brown. Please ask your child what they think would work best. For example, water, salt, vinegar, soda, soap, paint, etc. Be creative and help get their brains turning. Please pack a small amount of whatever they come up with and label it. We'll try out whatever comes in this week! Please feel free to send it in ASAP with their apples.
Each day we begin by answering the question of the day and doing our morning work. Morning work consists of handwriting or a page in our math journals. Students also practice writing their names with lower case letters on Fridays. After morning work, we begin our Morning Meeting by reading our morning message. Here are two examples from this week.
Students brainstormed how they can be independent during Work on Writing, our second option during Daily 5. They each have a journal that they can use to write in and today, I als
We have been learning how to choose good fit books in our classroom. Good fit books are books that are not too easy and not too hard. Choosing good fit books for beginning readers who are not quite reading words yet is a hard task, but it can be done!
This week during Daily 5, I have been able to check in with several students to see if they are choosing good fit books on their own. What I have been finding is that most students are choosing books that they can retell the story or they are choosing books that they can read the pictures. Our next step as readers is to find books that they can read the words. I have been encouraging students to choose a few books which include picture clues to help them "read" words. We have been using IPICK to choose good fit books. Please use this language at home with your child when you are helping them to find good fit books! As I have been adding to the reading portion of my site, I can't figure out how to put the newest information at the top. You will have to scroll down to find relevant information. Therefore, I have decided to post everything (including Reading info) here in the blog part of my site. I think many of you will find this to be easier than checking both sections and scrolling. Hope this helps!
Saw this in today's Parade Magazine. Was going to copy and post, but I don't want to break any copyright laws... Here is a link that I found to the same article posted on a different website.
http://www.journalnow.com/eedition/mapping/stay-healthy/article_9506db24-ebe9-541a-925a-b5a8a22ab267.html The prep work has begun! If you would like to help out with prep for our classroom, please take a moment to stop by our classroom. There is a tub with my name on it and inside, you will find projects that can be done at home. Cutting, stapling, etc. I appreciate the extra help!
Please see the Reading Section on the blog to learn more about Daily 5 and CAFE. We have learned that there are 3 ways to read a book. Read to Self is the first choice that we teach our students. We have worked up to two minutes of reading stamina. Our goal is 20 minutes! We have begun our Apple unit in preparation for our first field trip to the Portland Nursery for the annual Apple Festival. Here is what we know about apples and what we wonder about apples. We agreed after some discussion that apple trees DON'T grow in our tummies if we eat apple seeds. We also learned that apples have different skin colors due to sunlight and that apples can have up to 10 seeds inside. Here, we labeled the parts of the apple.
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AuthorThis is my sixth year teaching Kindergarten at a wonderful school in SE Portland. Archives
April 2016
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