Weeks of May 21st-June 8th

Oh my does time fly at this time of year!  Sorry for the delayed updates...my school life and home life are a bit crazy at this time and then we threw in a holiday weekend as well.

I'm going to summarize our last two weeks and give you a heads up on this coming week as well. 

I have worked at maintaining our routines and schedule so that children do not get summer fever too quickly.  Though while we are still calling our work time by the titles of reader's and writer's workshops basically it is one huge project we have been focused on.  As you likely remember we are in our final writing unit with research.  All lessons have been centered on this topic.  We have reviewed many of the principals of non-fiction writing as we go along.  Students have enjoyed learning more about their chosen animals and I look forward to the class learning about each other's topics.  At this time all students have conferenced with an adult on his/her animal research.  In addition to the information sent from home, each child had a book or piece from the internet on his/her animal.  An adult sat with each child to model how to find information on where it lives, what it eats and something interesting about it.  With the child's help an adult wrote a sticky note with information for each information page.  This week we are now copying that information into a book.  Here are started photos of work on illustrations for the research book.

Just before Memorial Day weekend we learned about many patriotic symbols in class.  Several of our work stations had to do with American patriotism.

We had several word studies with compound words and blends which were new for us.  We also had review lessons with rhyming, ending sounds and various other skills.

This week with word study we will be making an alliteration book. Students usually have a lot of fun with this.  You may remember the alliterative sentence "She sells seashells, by the seashore".  We use many of our alphabet books from class to help us come up with a sentence for each letter of the alphabet. 

Math lessons have also been reviews to prepare students for our year end assessment.  I have included a photo of students taking the assessment with their privacy folders.  Believe it or not, they love doing this.  I think because so many of our lessons are hands on game type activities the switch to a paper pencil task is welcomed.

We will finish up mapping this week as well.  Ask your child if s/he can tell you the name of his/her state, country, continent and planet?  I bet s/he could find Michigan on a U.S. map!

We had the White Lake librarian visit us last week to share information about summer reading programs.  Hope you take time to sign up.  It is so very important to keep your child reading all summer long.  S/he has worked so hard this year to reach grade level reading and will need to maintain it.  Please keep the many, many small paper books handy and in sight throughout the summer.  Put a bag of books in the car too.  You would be surprised how often they will pick up books in the car when they're locked in a seat (unless like me you get carsick from reading).

We had various work stations centered on America (the week before last and also on animals this week and last).  We practiced measurement, word searches, consonant blend activities, wrote about animals we knew, read our Pledge of Allegiance, sorted animals by legs or where they live, reviewed proper handwriting, we have a vet station this week and last week we planned birthday parties for our pets...

We were fortunate to have a special guest in our classroom.  We have been studying turtles so Andy brought his pet turtle to visit.  Everyone had the chance the hold him!

As our year is ending, we have had many assessments.  One of them is a year end writing assessment.  Below are photos of some of the finished pieces.  These pieces are done 100% independently.  I write the book spelling below only after it is turned it.  Wow, what progress we've seen all year.  It's so rewarding to see the growth from these kindergarten students!