Hello Weckie Parents!
Boy have we been busy learning and having fun in Kindergarten!! A special thank you to everyone who has come out and supported Dublin the last two weeks - coming to get ice cream treats at Diary Queen and coming to Rollerskating at the Rolladium! It has been so much fun watching the kids light up at seeing Mrs. Weckstein "in public"!! I'm happy to report that we all survived the Rolladium with no broken bumps, only stories of epic falls and lots of laughter.
Reader's Workshop
This is an exciting time of year for our young readers. Many are beginning to take all of the strategies that they have been learning (Eagle Eye, Stretchy Snake, Lips the Fish, Elephant Ears, Chunky Monkey) and apply them in their reading. The goal for Kindergarten is to get our young readers familiar with sight words and reading beyond pattern books, applying those strategies mentioned above. We will add a few more strategies as well before the end of the year. As a whole group we have been practicing these strategies with our sight word books and poems daily. In reading groups we spend the most time trying out the new strategies and then choosing which one helps us most when coming upon tricky words.
Thank you for returning the guided reading books daily/nightly in a timely manner! This is helping our groups to read several books a week and continue to build stamina, fluency, sight words and use new word strategies! Please continue to check backpacks daily for books coming home. Some days are easier than others to get to every group, but everyone who brings books home should have a parent sign their reading form upon completion of reading the new book and familiar books in the bag at home.
We have also been working this week on a new shared reading book: The Farm Concert by Joy Cowley. Doing a five day shared reading lesson has given us the chance to read this book many times through using various reading strategies (echo, choral, boys vs girls, etc.) as we build fluency and reading comprehension (favorite part, retelling the events, making connections, etc.)
Sight Words on the Word Wall include: and, a, be, can, four, five, go, have, is, it, I, like, look, me, no, not, one, of, on, see, six, the, to, two, there, we, yes.
Sight word cards have come home with every child. We spent a great deal of time making these cards. Please be sure to use them! Practice them in the car, at night time, during dinner, anytime you find suitable where you can quickly recite the words with your child is helpful and beneficial. There are so many great articles out right now online about the value of sight word recognition in emergent readers -- that's our kids!!
Writer's Workshop:
There is a lot going on in Writer's Workshop too!! We just recently finished up our How-To Unit where our kids became experts and wrote how-to pieces teaching us to do things that they know well. How to swim, how to wash your hands, how to make an ice cream sundae, etc. the list goes on and on. This unit will be coming home soon with your child!
The next mini-unit we moved onto was our Opinion Writing Unit. We have spent the past two weeks talking about our opinions! This has been super fun to hear voice in our writer's. Their favorites, their likes, dislikes, etc. We have compared things (apples vs. oranges) and explained in our own opinions why we would pick each thing. Please be sure to read through these with your child when they come home - you will learn all sorts of new things!
Close Reading:
What is close reading? Close reading is where we take a certain text (i.e. Bear Snores On which came home last week) and spend time reading and re-reading the text over the course of several days. We not only build our reading fluency, but we gain valuable comprehension strategies along the way. We have now moved into a Non-Fiction Close Reading unit with two parts. The first part is a whole class Close Reading on the theme of "Under the Sea"with dolphins. As a class we are working with a dolphin text and learning to answer questions both orally and in written form about the text. We are picking out new vocabulary, finding examples in the text to answer questions and generating our own questions on the topic. Each child has selected an Ocean Animal for their Non-Fiction writing and we will launch these animal studies with a close reading on their animal topic. Each child is in a group with 5-6 kids and will meet with Mrs. Weckstein to read a new text about their animal and do a mini-close reading in their small group. This will help lay the foundation for our Non-Fiction Writing Unit on Ocean Animals in the next few weeks.
Math Workshop:
In Math Workshop we have been learning to play several new math games that help to teach and reinforce all we have been learning in mini-lessons. Math in Kindergarten is unique that we do not have a math journal, rather most of our skills are taught through games. Students have been playing games that focus on: numbers in the teens- both counting objects in groups in the teens and counting on number grids in the teens. They have been working on doing number stories for both addition and subtraction with games. They have been working on basic addition and subtraction with games as well. We have also spent time working on shapes and shape names - both two and three dimensional! Game titles we have covered in the past two weeks include: Disappearing And Growing Train, Hiding Bears, Frog Hop, Shape Match Up, Domino Match Up, Addition Top-It, Monster Squeeze and basic math skill games on the new mini iPads we received from our Foundation For Excellence Grant!
Science:
We have just begun our third science unit titled, "My Earth". We began by brainstorming a list of things we find outside made by nature and things made by human. This made for a great conversation about our interactions with our planet and the upcoming holiday (this past Saturday) of Earth Day. Students had time to brainstorm their own ideas of how they could help take care of our Earth and went outside with the iPads to collect pictures that show signs of spring. Please look for all of this great work on the boards outside our classroom. Thank you to everyone who sent in rocks. We will be using these for the next few weeks and then make sure the right person takes home the right rocks!
Have a fabulous Spring Week! :-) Mrs. Weckstein :-)
