Ms. Davis took a minute to read to the class in the hallway while they were waiting to go into their Encore class for the day. She also likes to show sight word cards when students are waiting in line or entering the room to help them practice.
Students worked on sentences about things that they love and wrote them on an envelope that they decorated.
Students are getting back into the swing of things. Here are some students during Daily 5 read to self and word work.
Students learned about holidays around the world over a two week period. We discussed different countries. The picture below shows the country Sweden, which we selected as our display for the Holiday PTO Celebration. Students made St. Lucia crowns and learned how they celebrate the holiday in addition to information about holidays in other places around the world. There is also a photo of the ice cream cone Christmas trees we made using food items on our Christmas party day.
We have talked a lot about how the area where we live was affected by Hurricane Matthew. We discussed the needs people have now that they have had damage from the storm. Students brainstormed ideas of ways we can help local families and I recorded the ideas they came up with on a circle map. We use circle maps to document our thoughts when we brainstorm about a topic. Students were very thoughtful and creative with their ideas. They also worked on making encouragement cards for the students.
It has been a challenging month for our school district! Our thoughts have been with the families and schools who have had to deal with damage from the storm that came. After experiencing Hurricane Matthew and the flooding that came with it, we missed several days of school. However, students are now back in the routine of things and all I saw were smiles on yesterday and today. Students shared how much they missed school, their teachers, and their classmates. I was very impressed that they had not forgotten our rules and routines in spite of the hardships we all have been facing. They are doing an excellent job. We read a story called "The Rhino Who Swallowed The Storm," by Levar Burton, that is about a rhino that was very sad after his home was destroyed by a hurricane, just like the one we had. Students had the opportunity to share what they saw during the storm. We described the weather that occurred and also used this as a chance to practice retelling the story while building in some character education about feelings and how to deal with "storms" in our life. We have talked about our feelings and even will be working on seeing how others felt in this storm and past storms. Our main goal is to realize that as we are taking things day by day, our rainbow will come out soon and we will be stronger and happy. We have also been working on creating cards to give to our friends at Princeville Elementary to encourage them. We will be thinking of some ideas for how we could help others in this situation and looking for supplies that we may be able to share with some of the students and teachers there. I am overjoyed that our families are all safe and that our classroom community and family is continuing to grow together.
We love our rhyme a week! Each week we choose a rhyme to read and do different activities with it each day. On Monday we read it, on Tuesday we act it out, on Wednesday we look at a book of rhyming words, on Thursday we have a riddle book that has clues for us to figure out the rhyming words the clue describes, and on Friday is student choice day. Students are able to pick their favorite activity of the week to repeat, which is almost always acting it out again! So far, we have covered Jack and Jill, Rain Rain Go Away, and Peter Pumpkin Eater. Today we acted out Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater and Mrs. Andrews and Ms. Davis took pictures and acted it out with us. We want to share the pictures with you. You can also see the pictures on our bulletin board at school!
Today was a great day. I was able to share this Blog and Class Website with our students today so they could see all of the pictures I have posted. They knew I was taking pictures but had not seen the final product yet! They were really excited. We will begin to move in to more collaborative posts on this website to allow students to be more involved in what we post. I was happy to talk with my friend Mrs. Minayo over the weekend. I told my students about her today. She is a teacher who lives in Kenya, Africa. Her husband is also a teacher and they work with students at Cheery Education Centre. I met her about 2 years ago through epals and we completed some class projects. We are planning to do some penpal emails, skype, and other class projects this year. It is going to be very exciting to work together in our learning. The students looked at the Cheery Centre website. Ms. Minayo has already looked at our class website as well. We will be exploring maps of where they live and comparing our culture and daily lives to theirs throughout this process. This is a very exciting opportunity for each of our students. We did a brainstorm list of things that we could tell the students in Kenya about our classroom in our first penpal emails. One student said we need to tell them we love them!!! You can see a picture of all of the conversation ideas that students came up with below. (You will also see our sight words beside the list... we have a quiz on those this Friday!) More pictures to come soon... :-)
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AuthorMrs. Andrews & Kindergarten Students Archives
June 2017
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