Each morning we begin our day with ELA practice. Students practice tracing, writing, finding, and sounding out the letter of the day in their letter journals. We think of words that begin with our letter of the day to add to our word wall. We also use picture sort to help us review the sounds of letters of the week. Here are some snap shots from this week!
This week we continued to practice using tallies as a way to count/collect data. We spent time collecting beautiful fall leaves, sorting them by color, and counting/tallying how many leaves of each color we had.
We also played more dice games like "Roll, Tally, Write!" to practice different ways to show numbers. While students have a designated "math" time in the morning, so much math happens throughout each day in organic ways through play. I wanted to capture some of the moments I observed this week that brought me so much joy, because the students are naturally exploring concepts and skills that are at the heart of Kindergarten curriculum.
In these photos, you can see Sevi exploring shapes like circles, rectangles and triangles as she creates a spooky puppet. Ariya is counting and creating snowflakes and holds her creation up, counting how many points each snowflake has and showing the patterns she made. Lulu, Amelia, and Zach work together to construct a "ship", testing out which boards are steady and which are not, and counting how many different cones should go on each side for symmetry. Isobel and Jack collect cookie cutters and sort them by colors: yellows in one pile, oranges in the other. There are so many opportunities to cultivate mathematical thinking! As we watch children play, we can provoke their thinking by asking math-related questions: How many ___ do you see? Which is bigger? Which is the smallest? How is ___ different than ____ ? Do you see any patterns? And so on. This week has been all things Fall! In the first activity shown, students practiced cultivating their fine motor skills, creativity, and literacy development by using their hands and Q-Tips to paint fall trees! Our sight word of this week has been "like" and we learned a song to remember it ("L-I-K-E that spells LIKE!" to the tune of It's A Small World After All).
In the second activity shown, students collected fall leaves from outside. They practiced their fine motor skills by tracing and cutting their hand prints (not an easy task for a first semester Kindergartner!) and organizing the materials to make a Fall tree. I came across this quote that is the foundation of my social/emotional approach to education and classroom community building. A few years ago, a parent introduced me to Non-Violent communication (NVC). NVC helps us to look closely at how we are programmed as communicators and gives us tools to unpack all that is really being expressed during moments of conflict. The main idea is that everyone has basic human needs (safety, shelter, food, water, belonging, being heard, etc.) and emotions are the results of needs being met/unmet. I love NVC because of the concrete tools it gives us to talk to/hear children and each other. I have more resources on this on my resources page.
As part of our Identity "All About Me" books, students made a craft today to speak to their age. Every student created their own birthday cake--a craft that gives them practice with fine motor skills as they cut, glue, color, and design.
This week we began learning about tally marks as a way to count and collect data! We observed different elements around the classroom to practice: How many students are wearing blue? How many students are 5 years old? How many students have a brother? And so on. We also played a number of dice games to practice tallying, trying to remember that when we get to FIVE tallies, we cross the lines! This is a great concept for practicing counting, number sense, and ways to show/represent numbers.
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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
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