In Writer’s Workshop, the class has started to learn about writing 3-page stories. Last week, Room #7 worked together to create a story about our butterfly, Houdini. To begin our writing experience, we wrote a one-page story – We have a butterfly! But, after a discussion about how authors use multiple pages to tell their stories, the class and I decided it was time to stretch our stories over several pages. This was accomplished by the boys and girls verbally telling the story, with my guidance, and then stretching out their verbalizations over 3 pages.
Page One: The chrysalis turned green to brown and then hatched!
Page Two: We discovered a butterfly!
Page Three: At dismissal, the class released Houdini to fly to Mexico!
I modeled touching each page as we verbally told the story so that the cherubs could gain practice first tactically, picturing it in their minds, and then actually writing the story. This is difficult work! I’m impressed with how many students are experimenting with this tricky skill! We will continue creating 3-page stories to increase their in storytelling – using details and breaking the story apart into a beginning, middle, and end! Try telling stories together at home for fun! ability
This week has been full of enjoyable fall activities! The boys and girls were eager to talk about leaves and pumpkins. We have had many conversations about items one would see in nature during this autumn season. Room #7 also conducted a lot of measuring exercises with the pumpkins obtained during our fieldtrip. We noted that the pumpkins all had different sizes, and then we measured how tall and how round they were! The kids were excited to compare their results with their table friends.
We started a new unit in Math this week. During this unit, students are working a lot with shapes – learning their names, understanding their attributes, and describing the differences among them. Students are also finding out about teen numbers! During one of our whole group times, I introduced the students to a fun chart: What Does The Shape Say? Using the song, "What does the fox say?" we talked about all the different shapes and if they could talk, how they would describe themselves. The kids learned 2 new "fancy" Math words: vertices and parallel! Ask them what each shape says! (circle, rhombus, square, rectangle, trapezoid, hexagon, and triangle)!
· Build a City - This partner activity had students building towers depending on the roll of the dice. When their game was over, they had built a “city” of skyscraper towers! This week, the cherubs had an extra challenge. They connected all their towers, counted and decided which one had more cubes and which had less. If students had trouble counting that high, they compared the 2 towers by standing them up next to each other and deciding which one was more and less and by how much!
· Build a Staircase (to 9!) - This week, this fan favorite got even trickier!! Not only did the kiddos use number dice to increase their number recognition but also had to build the staircase to 9! They had to choose which dice to use (1-6 or 4-9) dependent on what they needed in their staircase. Working with a partner, the boys and girls of Room #7 took turns rolling a die. They then stacked cubes together to represent that number. Once the partners finished building their staircases (1-9), they took turns rolling the die to disassemble them!!
· Guess the Next Number - At this center, the children first lined up number cards from 1-20 (oohh a challenge!). Next, the kiddos closed their eyes, and I turned over various cards so that they could not see their numbers. When they opened their eyes, they used their knowledge of one more and one less to predict what the turned over cards were! Everyone did a magnificent job with this activity!
· Shrinking Number Monster – Another favorite, students rolled dice to determine how many “eyes” belonged on their monster work board. They then took away one eye, recounted them, and wrote the number that was one less!
· Grow and Shrink with Ten Frames – This activity appears to be just a simple counting game, but it is one that allows children to begin to see relationships between numbers. Using our 10 frame manipulatives, the cherubs represented a number and then had to choose to either “grow” or “shrink” their manipulatives to represent the new number. This station was even trickier this week because the numbers are getting greater! The kiddos are really developing their number sense with this station!
· Spin and Write Teen Numbers – Spin and Copy Teen Numbers – Using a spinner with all of our teen numbers represented in 10-frame form, the kiddos spun, then practiced writing that number on their board. They always had to remember: “Numbers in the teens start with a ONE!”
· Great Monster Race - This is an independent activity with a Halloween twist! Here, students had to roll dice and trace the number their dice had landed on. The students continued rolling and tracing until a particular spooky image won (e.g., a ghost, a haunted house, a witch, etc.)!
We have been talking about syllables in class! Wowza! Room #7 discussed how every word is made up of parts, or syllables. We figured out how we can discover how many syllables a word has by putting our hands underneath our chins to see how many times our chins move when we say the word. Next, we did a picture sort to see if the word had one, two, or three syllables! The kids did a fantastic job with this! We will continue our syllable finding with poems we read, morning message, and our Alphafriend songs! It’s a great game to play at home as well!
On Friday, Mrs. Grubss came in to talk about Zones of Regulation! There are four zones: blue, green, yellow, and red. Each zone has a fun descriptor:
Blue - Running Slow
Green - Good to Go
Yellow - Woah!
Red - Out of Control
The kids worked together to stick on different pictures to illustrate what each zone represents. For example, in the…
Blue Zone - you might feel: tired, bored, sad, or shy
Green Zone - you might feel: happy, focused, content, or ready to learn
Yellow Zone - you might feel: stress, frustrated, excited, silly, wiggly, or nervous
Red Zone - you might feel: angry or terrified
We will continue our work with the zones and will do check-ins to see how the kids are feeling! You can try it at home too!
Have a fabulous weekend!