Mrs. LaBlanc's Kinderblog

Friday, November 11, 2011

Week of November 7-11

We're happy to have a new classmate in our room. The children have kindly welcomed Zandra as a classmate and new friend.

We're so thankful for the great response we received regarding Dublin's Kindergarten Pow-wow. We had plenty of parents offer help in recreating many of our games/activities. Thanks too for the donation offers. I will send a note to those of you who offered to confirm items next week. We're completely covered for the food donations, thank you!
Please take time this coming week to create your child's tunic. This is sure to be a grand experience for all.

Work stations: Retelling puppets and wheels for Mrs. Wishy Washy, finding t's to record on clipboards, practicing t's with handwriting (starting at top line), sorting magnetic letters by short and tall letters (something we've been working on...l,t,h,k,b,d are examples of tall lowercase letters while a,c,e and v are short), browsing book- "On the farm", writing a November word book (from our Nov. chart) using a sentence pattern, making Mrs. Wishy Washy with a paper roll, making a turkey (which is hanging in the hall), counting how many cubes we could grab and graphing that number, counting Mrs. Wishy Washy's bubbles by tens (premade mats with number tiles by 10's)...and more!

We continued our farm theme from Mrs. Wishy Washy with other farm related big books. We sang "Old MacDonald had a farm" and then changed the words of this song to use "AEIOU". We sang about the short vowel sounds using the lamb, pig, hen, duck and dog...the lamb had an "a-a here and an a-a there". Students enjoyed learning to draw farm animals with some step by step directions.

Writer's Workshop: We had several important lessons about how authors keep writing projects going, how they may put some aside at times and how long it may take them to finish. In one mini-lesson we looked at 3 different books and predicted how long each book might take to complete. This guided our thinking towards our own writing. Students are learning to pull out previous writing pieces from their writer's notebook to continue working on them.

Reader's Workshop: Our focus this week was learning about reading partnerships. We had great conversation about how partners look, sound and act. The ideas discussed were put onto a chart (any charts we make are always revisited when time allows during our workshop time). Students were paired up with students of similar abilities and partner reading will now be a part of our workshop format within each workshop time. On our first day in partnerships I scanned the room with my camera looking for actions (rules) of partnerships we had just discussed. To end this first lesson I displayed partner photos on our TV screen (from my camera) and students examined each for strengths and areas for improvement. I was delightfully surprised with what students noticed.

Math: This week we took some time to review skills with various activities. We worked with patterns including using shape pattern blocks. The shape templates have become a favorite. I'm sure you found one or more shape designs in your child's folder this week. Ask your child how we remember the shape "trapezoid". I modeled using a robotic voice and could here it repeated throughout the week...I'll use any gimmicks to catch their attention, LOL. We also used links to pattern and count matching teen numbers. We also had an introductory lesson on symmetry. Students explored our room and even had a nature walk finding symmetrical items. Finally, we worked with measurement sequencing short to tall around the room.

We had our first sighting of hats & mittens on Friday. Many of you may not know that each morning your child hangs his/her coat on our coat rack which is packed tight housing 28 coats. This rack then gets brought down to lunch with us where students dress for recess. On Friday I taught children a song about putting our gloves in our hat and our hat in our sleeve. Please help your child practice this at home. Also, don't forget to put names on every article of clothing.

Upcoming Events:

Nov. 14-PICTURE RE-TAKE DAY
Nov. 17th: NO SCHOOL, parent/teacher conferences
Nov.23: Pajama Day to kick off pajama drive we hold for families in need
Nov. 23:Kindergarten Pow-wow (9:30 am)
Dec. 3: Dublin holiday craft show
Dec.3-9- Dublin Book Fair (will be open during holiday craft show)

Re-posting Halloween and Reading buddy slideshows

I've just noticed that the Smilebox icons were not in proper form on my last week's post. Hope it's easier to view now. They're great photos!

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Free photo slideshow personalized with Smilebox

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Math assessments coming home

This week I am assessing students both in group settings and individually with math skills. As you may remember from blogs we've worked a lot with learning to read and write numbers, making patterns, counting, shapes and sorting. Yesterday I met with small groups to have them write numbers in sequence independently. They were not able to use charts or number lines. As I've explained many times to my students, we all bloom at different times. Each kindergarten student is working hard and it is common that s/he be at his/her own pace or level at this time in the year. Our report card standards are viewed as a standard, but may take many children until the end of the year to master. Below are some samples of the number assessment. On the report card we use symbols B,D &S to represent beginning, developing and secure. At this time my hope is to see children starting to grasp the idea of number patterns. They've been learning the rows of our 100's chart by calling them ones, teens, twenties, thirtees etc. If students are getting most of the teen numbers and understanding some of the 20's or 30's they are developing at grade level expectation for this time of year.

Also, I worked individually with students to assess shapes. Some children are still confusing rectangle, square and sometimes triangle.

These papers will be sent home for you to view (and work on if needed over the next few weeks).

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Week of Oct. 31st-Nov. 4

What an action packed week we had! We started off Monday morning with Dublin's annual Halloween assembly with a magician and ended the day with our party. it was wonderful to see so many parents helping/participating in our party. Thank you for all of your donations, preparations and time spent on our party. At the end of this blog you can view the Smilebox slide show. I hope you enjoy it.

On Wednesday morning the district's transportation department visited us for a bus safety assembly and practice with bus evacuation.

Friday we met our 5th grade reading buddies. Mrs. Maxwell and I had talked about finding times/activities with which to match students for mentoring work. Our hope is to instill leadership roles among 5th graders while giving kindergartners connections to students outside our classroom. Of course we will also be taking advantage of help these 5th graders can lend. This week they assisted students to sound spell what it is they are thankful for this year at Thanksgiving. They also read stories to each other.

Sad news...For those of you who have had older children in Dublin's kindergarten you likely remember the Kindergarten Pow-Wow...We are sad to report that our Pow-Wow tub of materials was lost over the summer. There were room switches and the box has been lost or misplaced. Mrs. Eklov and I have searched repeatedly without success. Therefore, we are unable to host the Pow-Wow this year

Writer's Workshop:
I was amazed this week to see such progress with many of our writers. We have been learning to write stories across pages. Several students wrote 3-5 page stories (a sentence or more on each page). We've also been more purposeful in sharing writing in our author's chair. This helps give writers an authentic purpose for their writing and encourages fellow writers as well.

Reader's Workshop:
This week I explained how to do a "picture walk". When students pick up an unfamiliar book, it is standard that they walk their eyes through the pictures in the book. This helps prepare readers for content of the story. it also may open a door to some prior knowledge s/he may have on the topic. Also, students practiced using the strategies taught last week (using pictures, getting mouths ready & thinking about what makes sense). All students now have learned to book shop from leveled reader baskets. This gives students opportunities to use strategies in a "just right" leveled book.

Guided reading groups:
During work station time is when I meet with like-ability reading groups. Students are learning specific skills in a small group which allows for better focus and direct teaching. This week many groups work on certain sight words found in the texts used. others worked on tracking print with fingers. All groups worked on getting their mouths ready by having the beginning letter sound on their lips. I have 6 groups and have been meeting with 3-4 groups each day. Your child should be bringing home a "bag book" twice a week and sometimes more. S/he should reread this book 3 times. As they become longer and more difficult we will decrease the number. Students are getting reminders to pull "bag books" from hallway cubbies, but several forgot this week. It will take a few weeks to form this habit. In the meantime I'm trying to send the books again the next time if I recognize it hasn't gone home. This week I will be using some of our reading time to meet with individuals for assessments.

Work Stations:
Students practiced sequencing plastic pumpkins in numerical order and then counted spiders to match pumpkin numbers, strengthened small motor skills with lacing Halloween pictures, stamped/matched alphabet letters (a large part of this lesson is the work of locating the letter stamp in our stamp caddy), stamping with a number chart, practicing handwriting with letter Nn, listening to a story, matching pictures/words in a pocket chart, cutting magazine pictures and using our sounds to spell the object in photo and more!!

Math:
We worked with coin dice to practice coin matching/recognition. Students are not yet expected to name them. Patterns continue to be a focus in class. Many students are catching on to these. I introduced shape templates and they were a hit. We practiced naming the shapes (including diamonds, trapezoids, squares, triangles etc.). Students used the templates to create a shape picture and patterns too.

Students enjoyed meeting Mrs. Wishy-Washy this week. She is the main character in a series of big books we will read this year.

We learned a bit about quotation marks through this text. We also refer to them as "talking marks" to help them remember the meaning of these punctuation marks.

We also enjoyed retelling the story through role play and will continue to do so into this coming week. In fact many of our work stations will have Wishy-Washy related learning activities.

We painted plates and created Mrs. Wishy-Washy look alikes. They're presently displayed in our hallway. I love how different each face is!

A big thank you to Evan's family for our new lunch box carrier. His grandparents put this tub onto wheels and a family friend added the artwork for us. Our lunch boxes now fit comfortably into one large tub.

Upcoming Events:

If you are interested in ordering Dublin spirit wear, please send orders by Nov. 11th

Nov. 8- NO SCHOOL for students (teachers in-service day)

Nov. 11- Dublin movie night...Mr. Popper's Penguins

Nov. 14-PICTURE RE-TAKE DAY

Nov. 17-NO SCHOOL for students (parent/teacher conferences)

Nov.23- Pajama Day to kick off pajama drive we hold for families in need

Dec. 3- Dublin holiday craft show

Dec.3-9- Dublin Book Fair (will be open during holiday craft show)

Dublin now has a Facebook page. If you're on Facebook you can choose to LIKE it.

On Friday afternoon we met our 5th grade reading buddies for the first time. Mrs. Maxwell's class was excited to have the opportunity to read with our students. We will try to meet once a month with our buddies. Click below to see us with our buddies.