Students worked together to begin creating a "den" in our courtyard out of miscellaneous items; Students built lots of snow people; Students began reading and writing short-a word family words! Students made ice sculptures from balloons and stencils!
0 Comments
Kindergartners have been practicing counting to, naming, and writing numbers 11-20, and this week we continued to build on these skills! We made puppets of our favorite show, Numberblocks!, and practiced rearranging them from biggest to smallest. We used paint markers to practice counting and writing numbers 15-20. We also ended up making LOTS of art with these new markers.
This week we have been building on our knowledge of what maps are by practicing making our own. In-person learners made maps of our classroom and courtyard space, while remote-learners made maps of their bedrooms or home areas. My favorite photos are of the students looking out of the windows to check if their maps are oriented right! Kindergartners will present their research on maps in our all-school meeting. This gives them a chance to practice public speaking at an early age, demonstrate pride and confidence in themselves and in their work, and connect with other classrooms and communities.
We have added a variety of mazes to our puzzle center and students have been going crazy with these! We were also super proud of one of our newest train track designs, which utilized bridges and paper bricks. Lastly, students practicing the math sign for comparing numbers through a song about "a gator who always eats what's greater!". Students took turns choosing numbers and being the gator who eats the bigger number.
For this week's morning spelling practice, we explored letters with a couple of different items! We used shaving cream, rice, and rubberbands/geoboards to practice forming our letters and spelling out CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant) and sight words.
Here are some photos from this week's art project: window hangers! Students chose their favorite sketchbook drawing to copy onto their window hanger, then they used paint brushes to glue tissue paper to their hangers.
Every morning in the Kindergarten room is jam-packed with action and activity. We get started as soon as students arrive for the day with our calendar time, where we review the month, days of the week, weather and season. Each day, a different student leads this for the class. They use their own voice to ask their friends: What number day is it today? What day of the week is it? What was yesterday? What is tomorrow? What's the weather like? and more. This helps them to build confidence, practice public speaking, develop leadership skills, and more.
We then move into small groups to work on ELA concepts. This week, we played lots of "sight word jenga". In this game, students have to read a sight word and use it in a sentence before removing a block from the tower. After ELA, we have a nice long "brain break"! This is time for students to play in our courtyard or inside. 2 photos above show Ariya and Zach making giant snowballs to form a snow person! This week the K's have been learning lots about the Civil Rights Movement. We've used these discussions to connect to our current theme of Community: How do communities make change? Why do communities change? How can we help our communities?
One lesson focused on the role food played in building community and strengthening bonds throughout the fight for equality. This notion is perfect for helping young students like kindergartners find a connection to the almost mythical figures they learn about, like MLK Jr. Students realize: Hey! I eat food too! Food makes me feel stronger too! In one story, Child of the Civil Rights Movement, the narrator talks about how her family was not allowed into many restaurants, so they usually had organizers and activists over their house for dinner before marches and protests. We read this part and reflected on the types of foods that bring comfort and strength to us. Then, we drew our images and shared them with each other. With MLK Jr. Day approaching and our current exploration of "community", we are using this week to learn about what community activism looks like in practice. We used these 5 books to understand the Civil Rights Movement, key actors, and different strategies used by activists for social change and progress (marches, protests, sit-ins, etc.). We used Storybot's "Why Do People Look Different?" as well, to reflect on the diversity in our classroom and why it makes our classroom special and unique!
We have been starting off our math time with open-ended number talks--brief discussions which allow students to share their thinking of math processes out loud with each other. This helps us to develop number sense, build confidence, and recognize that there is no "right" way to "do" math. I also love these open-ended style questions to really emphasize that last point. The variety of observations students share always surprises me!
|
About MichelleMichelle has been a part of the Summers-Knoll community since 2015. Before teaching Kindergarten, Michelle taught 3rd and 4th grade. Archives
May 2021
Categories |