We had a very full week of learning and playing new games (with all of the rain and indoor recess.)
Learning Labs: a great way to start the day. New literacy games were introduced, some costumes for dramatic play, food for our kitchen area, and structures around the world photo cards that could inspire some building in the block area (and it did!!).
Alphafriends: Q (Queenie Queen) and D (Dudley Duck)
Our circle word was "to." Consonant sounds for our writing book were F and R.
Students cut, sort and paste words that begin with these sounds throughout the week.
Writing: "What I am Song" on Sesame street about being proud and happy for who you are. We then focussed on being brave spellers who stretch their words, listen for sounds and write what they hear. They then shared their writing with a partner. This wrapped up our "Show and Tell" writing using objects from home.
Reader's Workshop:Created pointer power sticks to use while reading. We reviewed the importance of pointing to each word one time as we read, to help keep track of our words in a sentence. We also practiced echo reading with our partners. They read a page and you read the same page. The kids worked very well together.
Our favorite thing we did was to introduce our listening library. Each group selected a book bag and followed the steps involved: get their numbered headphones, choose a bag, take out the book and cd player, plug in the headphones, open the book to page one, press play and read along. This took some time but with patience and persistence each student successfully listened to at least one book. This is now part of our reading rotation: read to self, partner read, word work and listening library.
We also had our 3rd grade Book Buddies visit us Friday. They read our Scholastic News with us.
Science: Completed a book about the pumpkin life cycle that will be kept in their book bags for practice.
Social Studies: Students chose a flag of the world that represented their family heritage and signed it in the hallway near the cafeteria. This was in preparation of the Multicultural Potluck Dinner on Wednesday. We used our world classroom map to explore countries. We also read a story Same, Same, But Different about similarities and differences between two boys; one who lives in America and one who lives in India.
Superflex: Mrs. Coker shared a story and talked about our thoughts and feelings, green (happy), Yellow (nervous, sad) and Red (angry).
Math Stations: Lots of stations this week
We wrapped up Turkey Teen, Missing Teen Numbers and Highlight Teens.
Introduced: the Dice Roll Turkey game to help with counting and number recognition.
Grab and Count to 20.
Shape Attributes: big and small, thick and thin, round or with sides. A partner game where one student describes a shape and the other reaches into a bag without looking. Shapes were rectangles, circles, shapes, triangles and diamonds (rhombus).
Teen Shapes: students used shapes to fill in teen numbers on a mat.
Tangrams: students challenged themselves by using shapes to fill in an outline. They then counted the number of each shape used, then redid the puzzle with a new configuration.
IPAD: Duck Duck Moose game with adding numbers.
Estimation: As a class, we met on the rug and passed around a container with items. They had to estimate how many objects there were. They chose any number between 5-25, and counted by 5's. They really enjoyed this and it is a great game to play at home to practice number sense.
Pop-Down: another fun game to play as a group where you start with a number (let's say 12. You count to another number, 19. The pop down number is somewhere between those two numbers, let's say 17. Students count going around the circle; 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 (POP DOWN) and they sit down, and the group continues to count on 18, 19, then start again, 12, 13....... They LOVE this game.
Read Aloud: At the end of the day, we have been reading our Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems (Mrs. Quinn's favorite author and illustrator.) We have read 13 so far!