Are you planning to come into the class for Halloween?

Hello,

Dr. Thorin has given us a reminder to have all parents planning to come into our classrooms fill out a criminal record check. I sent these out two weeks ago and will be happy to send you a new one if need be. Just email me at caronlablanc@wlcsd.org
Thank you!

Buckets needed

Happy Tuesday!
We're planning a game for the Halloween party and are in need of a few more McDonald's Happy Meal buckets. Apparently, they are giving them out presently with Happy Meals. If you have purchased any recently, can we borrow them for the party please?
Thanks so much!

More Halloween Items

Today your child is bringing home a Halloween Fun packet in his/her folder. This is full of practice skill work and should be fun. Please encourage your child to complete all pages. This can be returned anytime before October 31st.

Also, Claire's mom is collecting money donations to do the shopping for needed items & supplies for the Halloween Party. Please consider sending a $3 donation or calling Liz at 248-363-2842 to see how you can help with the party. Halloween is always a big, busy party!

Thank you!

Week of Oct. 10-14

The big news of our week was that we started work stations. The photo below shows our task board. Children find their names and then begin tackling work station posted above their names. I was very impressed with how smoothly the first week of stations ran.

Game work station:will have various learning games. This week they are exploring rhyme bags. Ian has just found that van rhymes with fan.

Clipboards work station:Students walk around our room with clipboards finding designated letters/words. This photo shows Kathryn finding and recording c's throughout the room.
123 work station:Used as math practice. This week students used stamps to represent numbers in a "If you give a mouse a cookie" counting book. Merrick is working hard.


Writing work station: We make books at this station. Usually it will be a theme book or connected to a story we're reading. We begin with a October book where we use a word chart to choose words to copy and then illustrate. This is a work station I encourage children to make strong effort to complete. As we progress with our writing you will see students' creativity flow here.

Puppet Theatre work station: Usually used to practice retelling stories we've read in class and acting them out. This week students used character sticks from "Brown Bear, Brown Bear".


Star work station: Can be any extra activity that fits into needed practice. This is often a thematic activity. This week students practiced putting together sentences we created and cut up as a group. They each follow the pattern "I like ___ (color word)." Sophia built this sentence all by herself!
Listening work station: Students are listening to a Christopher Columbus story. As our year progresses students will write listening responses to the stories.

Magnetic work station can have various literacy activities using letters. This week students sorted letters with sticks and/or curves. Here you see Lily, Payton and Evan working cooperatively.

ABC work station: Students will work with letters and or sounds in some way. This week they used letter stamps to stamp their names. I emphasized using lowercase letters. Sam is carefully putting the stamp away in the correct drawer.

Our browsing book work station: Often has a book with simple text for students to read. Normally that book is read to them first so that it is familiar. We use high lighters to find sight words we're learning. This week we highlighted "the". When these books come home please ask your child to read it to you and tell you the word s/he highlighted.

Our big book, "Dan Goes Home" helped us review rhymes and introduced both the question mark and exclamation marks. This Monday we will complete our lessons using this book. We will learn to use the word Dan to spell rhyming words by changing the first letter.

Our word study lessons helped us practice hearing syllables. Being able to hear and break a word into separate syllables helps us break down the sounds for our sound spelling. I also introduce our helping hand with vowels. Please know that vowels can be confusing to young children. Developmentally some children cannot yet differentiate the 5 main vowel sounds. They may think that egg sounds the same as a word beginning with a. However, some children are ready for the challenge of vowels. Often I look at these lessons as an introduction for some children without the expectation of mastery. With that said, most children did better than expected with sound spelling one syllable words with short vowel sounds.

We celebrated Columbus Day on Monday by reading a big book, looking at our globe & telling a summary of his trip and making a project with his 3 ships.




We worked with several math concepts this week. Some are..
Using dice we rolled a number, counted or recognized that number and recorded it by tracing that number. This went fast for some students while others had to persevere to complete all columns of numbers waiting for the dice to roll their needed numbers.

A clown paper should have come home Friday used to have students draw objects to represent numbers on the clown's balloon. If your child struggled with this, please take a few minutes to practice this skill.

We used the book "Going on a bear hunt" to introduce or review directional words such as in between, beneath, over etc. We also learned a new song from Jack Hartman called "Going on a treasure hunt" with similar words. A shorter/taller lesson was also taught this week with photos of furniture in our room to measure ourselves against.

Writer's Workshop- Student's are already making great gains with their writing. This week we had mini-lessons on writing independently using tools inside our room such as a date stamp which is kept at each table.

Students had several lessons on using sounds to spell/write ideas. One of the techniques I use to teach this the analogy of how a turtle might talk. Using "turtle talk" students stretch the sounds of a word so they can better hear the sounds. In the examples shown here you can see how students are attempting to spell using sounds. If you look at Payton's work she's started her story with "Once upon a time". I am thrilled with the progress I am seeing already!

Reader's Workshop- This week we read several new titles and reread a book or two from last week. We learned about making connections with the books to things in our lives. "When Sofie Gets Angry" is a book that most students can relate to. We had turn & talks (time to turn to a partner seated next to him/her and share ideas in quiet voices) to share our connections with one another. Many students could tell countless stories of when they were angry at one tine or another. During our independent component, students were asked to make connections with their own books. You'll see a photo of Hailey sharing the connection she made with her book.

We also had our first experience with book shopping. Children took home their personal books and were taught to book shop from our classroom library this week. We start by choosing 3 books and will eventually have 6-8 each week. They will have opportunities to "read" these books during independent reading part of Reader's Workshop as well as each morning upon entering our classroom. The photos here show Payton and Nolan enjoying their chosen reading spots during independent reading. The chart shown here represents ideas taken from the children and myself to help us choose books.

A big thank you to Evan's mom & Christian's mom for helping decorate our classroom for Halloween. They were both here volunteering all morning for the Fun Run and when it was rained out for a short time they kept busy in our room!

Extra bits of information for you...

Missing work-If you don't find a piece of work in your child's folder that appears on the blog. There a few possibilities regarding the missing paper: First, it may have been misplaced in a desk or book bin or somehow didn't make it into our "work tub". It could have been missing a name and the owner was unable to recognize it as his/hers. Third, your child may not have completed it. Sometimes children don't always finish all work stations that week. If those children are off task and not using time wisely I will likely send the unfinished work home or have him/her complete it during free choice. However, there are times when children are working hard at other stations doing quality work, but didn't get to all stations. As long as they are practicing and participating in real work I do not feel a need to have all work stations completed. For example, often a child is interested in writing and will do more than is expected at that station. I don't feel a need to pull him/her from an involved piece of writing practice to build sight words at the magnetic center or go over to the listening center. Throughout the weeks s/he will have many opportunities to practice at each station.

Library Books- Please try to return books on Mondays. If your child does not bring home a new book on Tuesday, s/he likely didn't return the last one.

The books you sent from home on the first week of school were sent home on Friday. We learned how to book shop and will be using our classroom library to fill our book bins.

Reminder to send in your child's birthday book and the number book home project.

Book orders- There is still time to get on-line at www.scholastic.com to place book orders for your child. Reading each day/night with your child is the very best thing you can do to support his/her literacy.

Popcorn Fridays-Many parents have inquired about the popcorn cards. It sounds as though several students did not get their popcorn last week. My guess is that there was confusion on that first popcorn day. To help in the next popcorn Friday I will ask the PTA for a list of my students with cards and I will let those students know to go to the table and ask for their bag. Hopefully, this will solve the problem. There were no sales this Friday due to the Fun Run.

Halloween Party- Notes went home last week regarding our classroom party. For those of you new to Dublin I want to explain that it is our tradition to start our celebration with a whole school parade. This will begin on Monday, October 31st, at 2:30 PM and usually my class leads the parade! It's a great day to come and see the school spirit of Dublin. We walk through two main halls and then outside to the playground. You may want to take your first photos in our hall and then beat us out back for the entire parade. Afterwards we will go straight back to our classroom to begin our party. Claire's mom has planned a few activities and games and we are looking forward to having many helping hands so that all runs smoothly.

Upcoming dates to note:
Thursday, Oct. 20th: Student council pumpkin sale
Monday, October 31st: Halloween party
November 17th: conferences

Dublin Fun Run 2011

We finished our run just before the rain began pouring over Dublin! All children participated by running, jogging or walking.

There was a mix-up with prizes for our classroom on Friday, but children can look forward to our prize drawing on Monday.

Free photo collage generated with Smilebox

Just a quick message today to remind you of Dublin's Fun Run. Please remember to return your envelope with monies collected for the fund raiser. If you can't find the original envelope, just send it in a plain one labeled Fun Run. Also, it may be a good time to talk with your child about prize drawings and how not everyone wins a prize. Having said that, in past years there have been many prizes donated and a good percentage of children returning an envelope will win a prize.
Also, your child may share with you that we had a guest teacher in our classroom today. In Walled Lake schools we take many assessments on children's progress and are given a certain number of substitute teachers throughout the year to have the testing completed and/or checked and analyzed. However, even with 3 sub teacher dates it is not enough time to complete the testing. Therefore, you may read in our blog periods of time when I'll be doing testing (especially near the end of marking periods).Today kindergarten teachers were analyzing writing pieces. These assessments help us to guide our future lessons and give us information needed to individualize lessons for specific needs.

Week of October 3-7

Sorry for the delay on this week's blog. I was having technical difficulties and a crazy weekend that didn't allow for much time to make the needed fixes.

Just when we thought it was cooling down for fall, we had this beautiful week of warmer weather. The children were able to enjoy outdoor recess most of the week. Let's hope for more in the upcoming week.

This week...

Loved how the Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star projects turned out! We will continue to learn nursery rhymes throughout the year.


Our Reader's Workshop lessons emphasized studying the pictures in a book to help us better understand the story. I shared how often the words won't tell the entire story. In the book "Fire, Fire said Mrs. McGuire" we found that the words did not tell where the smoke came from, but instead the illustration told the ending. We talked about how it was a different and unique way to end the story. Students practiced looking closely at pictures in books from their book bins during their independent reading and some shared what they found.







Our Writer's workshop focused on oral story telling. Again, we want to stress that what we say, we can write. But this time we practiced telling stories to each other. I model story telling on the spot and even explained how to make something simple into a story. I gave an example saying I couldn't think of a story, so I'd tell about my breakfast...I extended this story with parts that didn't really happen. We had a big discussion on how stories are best when they are about things we know best and that we can add details to make it more interesting even if they are not true. However, I stressed the fact that we need to tell others that parts aren't true. Students were put into small groups to share stories. We call these "buzz groups" . To encourage good listening, only children with a talking stick can speak and the stick goes around so that everyone gets a turn. As we wrap up the stories a student from each group is asked to share the most interesting story that they heard from another student. The student that told the story comes to the front and eventually we make a blind vote on the best story of the day. Below you can see Andy, Lily, Amelia, Nolan, Kathryn and Claire after they each shared their stories. On this day Claire's story won. I then model how to illustrate and write her story as she dictates it to me. In the upcoming months your child will return to his/her seat to "write" his/her story.













In word study this week we worked with the sight word see. We practiced writing it on white boards and made a book with the word see. Children found fall words from charts put out on their tables to use in their books. Your child should begin recognizing "see" in text. Over the past weeks we have also worked on "the", "my" and "I". We use our bodies to make motions to help us learn these. Ask your child to spell any of these words and see if they remember motions to go along. For example we spell t-h-e on our arms touching our shoulder, elbow and wrist with one letter. Your child should also be able to show you our tricks for the sh sound and th...for t-h we put out our index finger for t and the next for h and then make our thumb "magically" pop up because together t-h makes th sound as in thumb. These are the types of things we do that will hopefully give meaning to some of our abstract lessons. We repeat these often as repetition with young children is a must. We also had a lesson on hearing words in sentences. On a pocket chart I wrote sentences about things we do in kindergarten. After reading these and having children come up and read them they went back to tables for independent practice. Each child was given a cut up sentence (one of those from the pocket chart) and s/he had to rebuild the sentence. It was glued in order and illustrated with a picture to match. This was difficult for some as they struggled to match their sentence with one of the four from the chart. Posted is Addison's independent page "We sing songs in kindergarten".

We also had an updated "Good morning" poem for October. These poems are set up to give children patterned text with only the last word changing. Students practice tracking words with this familiar text. Allison and Sophia are matching pictures to the familiar sentences by looking at the first letter of the last word in the sentence.

Rhyming continues to be part of our weekly word study as well. Here is a lesson we used a fun Raffi song, "Down by the bay" to teach.

Our math lessons throughout the week had a shape focus. We began with a feely box filled with objects from our room that represented the basic shapes and a few tricky ones such as a cone. Throughout the week we made shape books, colored shapes with a code (the clown shape figure your child should have brought home this week). We will be finishing our last shape book on Monday and it will be coming home soon. As always any of these small paper books should be reread at home. If your child forgets the pattern of the text please give assistance and ask that s/he point with his/her finger to read on.

The highlight of our week was our Wednesdays' fire prevention theme day! We read numerous books teaching us about fire fighters and fire safety. Our big book "Fire Fire said Mrs. McGuire gave us many laughs. It's a book written by Bill Martin Jr. whom the students recognized as the author of Brown Bear and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom; such smarties we have:)Students gave reasons they might want to be a fire fighter and we made fire trucks. During free choice many of the children pretended to be firefighters and there were plenty of volunteers wanting to scream FIRE! At the end of the day we attended an assembly in the cafeteria put on by White Lake Firefighters. Throughout the presentation they took participants from the audience. Lily got to hold a mask, while Andy and Merrick role played the stop, drop and roll technique. Finally, we went outside to see the firetrucks. Fun was had by all.

Just a few extra notes for you...

You'll see that your child is writing a given number near his/her name on most papers. This is done to help volunteers place papers into the correct folders.

As you look over papers being sent home please take time to share your thoughts regarding the work. Always be sure to give praise first for things that are completed and/or done well. If there are notes on the papers please explain these. This one on one time will be beneficial for your child's progress. First, it shows how you set school work as a priority and second it gives attention to specifics of progress or needed improvement.

I am going to attempt to begin work stations this week (Tues.- Thurs.) For the first week I will work with children to set expectations and create a busy, but working environment. Beginning the next week (Oct. 17th) parent volunteers signed up for work stations are invited to join us to help with work stations while I take time to teach with small groups.

Thank you to our play dough makers...Madelyn and her mom made it last week while Kaitlyn and her mom are making it for next week. This is certainly a favorite activity in our room.

Our Fun Run will take place this Friday. This began a few years ago and replaces the many small catalog sales, pizza or cookie dough sales etc. that we once had as fundraisers. This is a one time donation for most families and/or students are asked to get pledges from family/friends for their walk. Our school budget for approximately 500 students is very small and these funds help Dublin in so many ways. Our school is known for the many extra activities we provide for our students, but these could not be possible without fundraising. In fact, within the next few weeks classrooms will be visited by Science Alive, a group that brings exotic animals to the children. It's a fascinating experience for all! We will begin our run with light exercises, then we'll run around the track and finally have a snack and water before returning to class. Students have a great time out there and are encouraged to run/jog to exercise bodies. Our time slot is from 9:50-10:40 A.M. You're welcome to come run with us or cheer us on.

*October 14th - Dublin's 3rd annual Fun Run
*November 8th- Teacher Professional Development day, no school
*November 17th - No school, parent/teacher conferences