Last week, we continued to work on our Who Am I? PBL project, reading more books that helped us explore who we are and how we connect to others. We thought about the question ‘What Makes Me Me?’ in regards to our families, our names and the ways that we are unique and different.
On Friday, we learned more about each other at our "Museum of Us". During this gallery walk activity, students had a turn to be both a speaker and a listener. When they were a speaker, they had an opportunity to present the object they brought from home that represents them to their classmates one at a time, using their speaking to teach others who they are. When they were a listener, they used their listening skills to learn new things about their classmates.
After our Museum of Us gallery walk, we thought as speakers about what we noticed good listeners doing while we were speaking. We noticed and appreciated when listeners were standing still and focusing on the speaker without getting distracted. We also thought about what speakers were doing that helped us when we were listeners, listening to learn.
We added speaking to our listening rubric and will practice using our bodies, voices and brains to speak, just like we do when we listen.
I have posted a slideshow showcasing the objects everyone brought and photos of the gallery walk. We also took a video of each student presenting his or her object on the students’ individual iPads. This coming week, we will help students watch the video of themselves presenting and assess how well they did as a speaker having a still body, a clear voice and an engaged brain.
We will continue to deepen our understanding of how we the same and how we are different next week and continue to discuss how these differences are what make us each so unique and wonderful!
On Friday, we learned more about each other at our "Museum of Us". During this gallery walk activity, students had a turn to be both a speaker and a listener. When they were a speaker, they had an opportunity to present the object they brought from home that represents them to their classmates one at a time, using their speaking to teach others who they are. When they were a listener, they used their listening skills to learn new things about their classmates.
After our Museum of Us gallery walk, we thought as speakers about what we noticed good listeners doing while we were speaking. We noticed and appreciated when listeners were standing still and focusing on the speaker without getting distracted. We also thought about what speakers were doing that helped us when we were listeners, listening to learn.
We added speaking to our listening rubric and will practice using our bodies, voices and brains to speak, just like we do when we listen.
I have posted a slideshow showcasing the objects everyone brought and photos of the gallery walk. We also took a video of each student presenting his or her object on the students’ individual iPads. This coming week, we will help students watch the video of themselves presenting and assess how well they did as a speaker having a still body, a clear voice and an engaged brain.
We will continue to deepen our understanding of how we the same and how we are different next week and continue to discuss how these differences are what make us each so unique and wonderful!
Developing Phonemic Awareness
Learning to read can be a challenging task for our youngest learners. It can be even more challenging when students get to 3rd grade and are looking to decode multi-syllabic words in a Science text that they have never heard before. Of course, students will use all they know about that science topic and the other clues from the text to help them figure out the words, but they will also lean on their decoding abilities to help them. Backing up to kindergarten, we want students to use meaning and comprehension to help them read unknown words, but we also want them to have strong decoding skills. Through the Reading Horizons program, students are being taught to recognize that even though each sound exists by itself, it is the joining of sounds that creates words, the building blocks of language. Here is the sequence of instruction that is happening:
Teach Individual Phonemes:Teachers provide instruction on individual phonemes through an interactive, multisensory technique that engages every student simultaneously in learning to hear, say, identify, and manipulate individual sounds. Nothing is presumed about students’ prior knowledge; instruction starts at the very beginning to make sure that there are no gaps in understanding for any student. Join Phonemes:Next, students learn to join these phonemes to form “slides”— letter combinations containing a beginning consonant and an ending vowel. Slides are important for teaching students to “blend” from one sound to the next without inserting pauses or extra sounds between spoken phonemes. Developing this “blending” habit will prove valuable for preventing the insertion of extra letters during phonics instruction. Build Words:Finally, students learn to add ending sounds onto slides to build real words using any phonemes taught up through the current point of instruction. Students can then practice identifying and exchanging the individual phonemes in words, recognizing rhymes, and counting the syllables of words. These there steps are not done in isolation. We are doing all three as we progress through the alphabet. For example, once we learned the individual phonemes of vowel A and consonant B, we immediately introduced the "slide". A slide happens when you join a consonant with a vowel. The first slide students learn is the "ba" slide. This makes the /ba/ sound like in "bat." Now that students know how to blend phonemes together, we move to building words using that slide. We keep repeating this process as we learn new letters. Sight WordsA part of early reading learning involves recognizing most common words, or sight words. Sight words are words that are used a lot in books, and often are not easy to sound out. There are 200 sight words that students are expected to memorize by second grade. Kindergarteners are expected to know the first 25 sight words by the end of the year. Last week, our shared reading was the sight word chant. Memorizing this chant officially began our focus on sight words. By the end of the week, we had added these first 24 sight words to our word wall and had begun to read them in books we read and write them conventionally in books we wrote. Students will progress through the sight word lists at different paces this year. As students demonstrate mastery of each list of 25 words, they will be given a new list. Lists are posted on the curriculum ~ resources page of this website. We'll talk more about sight words at conferences. Until then, encourage your student to practice the chant at home and hunt for these words in the books you read together each night. If it is fun for your family, write the words on flash cards and play games that help your student memorize these words. | Each lesson includes dictation and guided practice on individual whiteboards at the carpet as well as independent paper pencil practice. Home SupportWhen your student brings these pages home, you can ask them: - "what's the name of this letter?" - "what sound does it make?" - "what words start with this sound?" - "what sound does this slide make?" If your student is struggling with his or her writing, have them practice writing letters at home. The more a student practices writing letters, the more readable the letters will be. Let me know if you want to borrow a lined white board from our classroom. If your student wants extra practice or enjoys at home literacy learning they can log into their Reading Discovery account at home! Here is how you login: - On a desktop, go to queenanne.rhdiscovery.com Your student's login info is their first name and the first letter of their last name. - If you want to download the app, make sure you download all the components of Reading Horizons Discovery! (clubhouse, vocab, library, and games). Once all of those apps are downloaded, students can log in through the CLUBHOUSE app with their first name plus the first initial of their last name. The first time they log in, you will need to put in the site ID, which is queenanne. You will only need to do that once! |
Sharing our first published true stories!
Celebrating our first full marble jar with pajamas, stuffies, favorite story books and
a whole lot of imaginary, creative play with new kindergarten friends!
Halloween! | Coming soon... |
Students can wear their costumes to school all day tomorrow or change for our parade. Please leave costume-related weapons or costume accessories that may easily get lost at home. Our morning will look a lot like a regular school day! If your student's costume prevents them from being able to do their learning (ie. sit in a chair, use a pencil, ect.) please have them change into their costume before the parade. The parade will take place at 12:30. We will be doing a short loop around the community with the whole school and then heading in for our class party at 1:00! Post-Halloween candyPlease limit the halloween candy in your student's lunch to 1 piece. We want to set your student up to be the most successful they can be! |