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.

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Customize your own digital slideshow

click below to see our Halloween slideshow

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This free photo slideshow made with Smilebox

Week of October 24th-28

I hope all families are enjoying the weekend. Hopefully you're having better weather home than we're having in Traverse City (cold and rainy).

We hit our 38th day of school Friday. The progress I’m seeing is steady and strong!

I heard some fun news this week about one of our classmates, Sam. His photo is entered in a contest to be on the cover of Metro Parent magazine! If you would like to help get him there, please follow this link to vote for him. Thanks

http://www.metroparent.com/Metro-Parent/Contests/Metro-Parents-CoverKids-Readers-Choice-Contest/

Our class enjoyed reading/singing several Halloween books and songs. I can guess that you’ve heard our Counting Creatures song with the chorus “Once upon a time one Halloween night I opened up the door, and oh what a sight”. We also continue to learn new movement songs such as “Cross Over” or the “Cowboy dance” with Jack Hartman’s CD/DVD. The movements demonstrated in these songs help build our brains and bodies

Our work stations gave us much practice on skills including: patterning with Halloween stamps, practicing making h’s and looking for words beginning with the h sound, finding h words on clipboards, playing a Halloween phonics bingo game, matching Halloween words to pictures by looking at the beginning letter sound, writing a Halloween poem, sequencing 5 pumpkins on a gate from big to small (to go along with our “Five Little Pumpkins” song/text), making a paper strip pumpkin, matching upper case to lower case letters and more!
This week I noticed that with parents help (and our voice count downs) students used quieter voices and it seemed to be a calmer work environment. From this came better quality of work. Please take time as work comes home to review it with your child. Ask how it was done. Ask if s/he feels it’s his/her best work! As a staff this week we met and discussed the value of hard work and effort from students and the results it has on LONGTERM student success.













Guided Reading Groups took place while students participated in work stations. Thank you to the many moms volunteering during work stations so that I can pull groups without many interruptions. At this time I am meeting 3 reading groups each day which should meet your child twice a week. As we build stamina for work stations we will stretch the time period to fit in more groups each day. I express to my students that “reading group time is the most important part of my day”. I was delighted to hear from several students that it is also their favorite! Please remember to listen to your child read his/her book 2-3 times and return it daily in its’ bag.

Reader’s Workshop: This week’s lessons focused on reading strategies. We examined the first three, most used strategies kindergarten students use. Children practiced using these throughout the week during our morning message (an interactive writing to start our day), big book reading, and during independent reading. Below is a chart we built as I introduced each strategy and a photo of the prompt cards I use during guided reading. Additionally, you’ll see photos of students with their book bins during independent reading. I love the little nooks they seem to find in our room.

Writer’s Workshop: We started our week discussing what writer’s look like when they’re writing (on task, quiet voices, thinking). We worked on spacing one day using our spacemen markers. This is a skill we will review again and again throughout the year. We also worked on describing a sentence as a complete thought or idea. I introduced a more formal share time where students were able to sit in the “Author’s Chair” to read his/her piece of writing. We will work towards doing this more often, but at this time it’s hard to get our class to work at similar paces. Therefore, we stop several times as we end our writing session to share from our seats or the front of our room. Finally, the challenge lesson of the week was learning to stretch our stories across pages. Students attempted to write a 3 page story and were rewarded with getting to use small table staplers to staple the pages into a book!

Math: We continue to work on teen numbers and practicing writing numbers with correct formation. Many students are still struggling to start numbers (and letters too) top to bottom and left to right. Each morning students participate in answering a question by filling in a graph. Amelia’s big sister has been helping us with this daily graph. Throughout the year we will try graphing independently as we did with the pumpkin count/graph paper that should have come home. We practiced patterning with various items as seen in photos. We extended this pattern lesson by naming our patterns with letters. For example with cubes one might have shown me red, red, blue, red, red, blue, red, red…and we named it AABAAB. We measured ourselves with a measuring tape and then measured with friends to see if we were taller or shorter than each other. We hope you like our calendars each month. This helps us practice writing our numbers as well as learning the pattern of numbers.

It thrilled me this week and last to find that SO many children are choosing to spend time at our writing center during their free choice time. It is proof that learning can be and is FUN!!

Thanks to each of you for helping Claire’s mom prepare for our Halloween party. Each child should bring his/her costume in a bag, as we WILL NOT be wearing our costumes until after 2pm. Our parade will begin at 2:30pm. Parents who wish to help their children dress should arrive at approximately 2:10 PM.