My goal this week was to get back into our daily routines as quickly and tightly as possible. With the extra projects and such included in the holidays we lessened some of these routines.
We learned a little bit about New Year’s and what it means…We made a web listing many concepts around this idea such as our new year starting at midnight…how some people have a tradition to do a “polar bear plunge” into cold lakes for the new year… how many people go to parties and celebrate with hats, horns etc. We also learned that January comes from a word that means forward and backward. We made a map of our year looking backward to help us remember sequence within a year’s time.
We started back with our Good Morning in January poem which gives the children familiar text to reread. In case I missed it in the past each month we read a poem with monthly theme words that follows the pattern of “Good morning to the ____.” This month they quickly recognized the first 4 words and had to figure out the last word such as mitten, sled, snowman etc. by looking through the word. Up until now it has been particularly easy for children to guess the word by looking at the pictures offered and their beginning sounds. This month I’ve made it more difficult by choosing mostly words beginning with s. As you read at home with your child try to notice if they are yet able to read through the words looking at more than just the beginning sound.
I was able to meet with most reading groups twice this week. I’m eager to begin retesting as I am aware that many of our groups will again change due to jumps in reading levels. Please continue to value the reading practice your child gets from the take home books. These books should be read 3 times, unless it is a longer book which only occurs in one of my groups. Please remember to prompt your child when s/he is stuck on a word. Common prompts would be: “get your mouth ready”, “think about what makes sense”, “does that word look like ____”, “look at the picture”, and most recently...”look through the whole words and stretch the sounds out together”.
Word Study:
• We had a review lesson on syllable counting. We have found that being able to divide words into syllables helps us with our sound spelling. We are able to “turtle talk” one syllable at a time hearing and recording the sounds we say. We made an “I Love” book that should have come home this week. The children did a fabulous job on sound spelling their favorite food and illustrating this short book.
• After hearing about the “Polar bear plunge”, we played a game with polar bears with words written on them and also a person plunging into cold water. The object of the game was to use our letter stretching skills to read as many words cards (which were consonant-vowel-consonant, such as bed, cup, hat) as possible without picking a plunger. This was still difficult for some and can be practiced when reading at home with your child.
• To go along with the forward/backwards idea from the root meaning of January students created a book of opposite words. We also enjoy singing an opposite song in class.
Reader’s Workshop:
• Our emphasis this week was on making connections with books whether it be connecting an idea in a book with our own lives or connecting two different stories together. I’ve purposely selected some read alouds that have common themes in them. We talked a lot about being angry and listened to stories with angry characters as well.
• We also looked closely at characters and tried finding the characters in books from our own book bins.
• Lastly, we practiced looking closely at pictures in books we’re reading. Students learned that they can find out more about the story if they pay close attention to the pictures. We even found that some stories have things in the illustrations that are not mentioned with words, but still play a part of the story.
Writer’s Workshop:
Our week was spent recognizing and telling 3 part stories first orally and then writing them. We used our buzz groups (where children sit with 2-4 others and share stories). Our focus was to create a beginning, middle and end. I’ve found that the beginning and end seem easier than the middle. We will continue writing these stories this coming week. I will also have several mini-lessons on spacing and mechanics such as using a capital to begin each sentence.
In the upcoming weeks I will be teaching students to write “small moments”. A small moment is a small part of a larger picture. For instance if a student wanted to write about his weekend with his grandpa…we would try to focus on one simple part of the weekend such as helping his grandpa fix the lamp. We will be talking about taking a watermelon story down to a seed idea. This will be our focus the entire month. Of course again there will be mini-lessons involved such as word choices or checking to be sure sentences make sense.
Math:
• Within our New Year’s study we learned about ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd etc.)
• We practiced our number writing with our January calendars. I was amazed with the improvement among students in this area. Did you notice this as well?
• Students learned “top-it” a number card game played like the card game I grew up with called “war”. We used numbers 0 through 20 and most students did very well with this. We practiced sequencing numbers with the cards as well.
• We had some paper/pencil practice with graphing, counting & recording, and also patterning. Over the next two weeks you will see a lot of math practice paper work. Normally in class we learn and practice through games and using manipulatives, which is best for young learners. However, we have a mid-year math assessment coming up that is all paper/pencil tests. Therefore, I want to give children practice by using more worksheets over the next two weeks to prepare them for a written assessment.
Work Stations:
Rhyming matches, Happy New Year book at browsing box (students really had to look closely at the pictures to read this more difficult semi-pattern book), wrote about holiday break experiences, find hidden abc’s in picture, played a spelling game with vowel-consonant-vowel with a large mat where children physically jump from letter to letter, worked with a balance comparing weights of various objects, practiced j’s with handwriting and clipboards and more!
Most of you have heard that we are missing a valued member of our classroom...Addison and her family moved just before break. We hope to keep in touch with her and write her now and then.
While we were sad to start the new year without Addison, we were happy to meet our new classmate, Jacob. We hope he enjoys Dublin as much as we do.
Important Information for the next two weeks:
I will be spending a large amount of time testing individually. I have at least 6 separate assessments to give each child just in literacy, not including the DRA which tests actual reading levels. I will not be having guided reading groups during this time, but will use that time while children are working independently to test students. Even with this hour a day, I will not get through all the testing. I will also try to have Mrs. Noel, our para facilitate lessons such as calendar time and other areas when possible to find time for this mid-year testing. Testing 28 children will be quite time consuming, but well worth the time spent when the results guide my teaching more specifically to my students.
Upcoming dates to remember:Friday, January 13th- NO SCHOOL, teacher professional development day
Monday, January 16th – NO SCHOOL, Martin Luther King holiday
January 20th- end of card marking
February 14th- Valentine’s Day Party (in the past I’ve often had an earlier party to include a classroom lunch, but I’ll talk with our room mom and give more information on this in the upcoming weeks)
February 20th through the 26th- Winter break, NO SCHOOL
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