Mrs. McGee's Kindergarten Blog: Week 3 Complete!

In reader's workshop, we learned how readers read from cover to cover as well as the importance of rereading. Rereading the same words help us to learning new words, which leads to more fluent reading. We have practiced reading independently and with a partner each day. I modeled how to read the pictures and the words. We also learned to 'add a pinch of you,' meaning tell your partner what you are thinking and connect your background knowledge. Students also learned to share their Wow! pages with each other. On the other chart, we discussed how important it is to read the pictures and the words to help us figure out what the author is trying to teach us. Students are already growing immensely! They are becoming excited about reading each day. Today, we book shopped! Students got to pick 10 books to keep in their book basket that they will read and reread each day for a week. Then, at the end of the week, they will pick 10 new books.

During our phonics study, we began to talk about consonants and vowels today. We made three letter words with the consonant, vowel, consonant patterns. We sang songs and even learned that vowels make two sounds, short and long. We also continued to celebrate someone's name each day and examine the name talking about how many letters, syllables, uppercase and lowercase letters and sounds.

During snack time, I either read aloud a book or watch a book on the SmartBoard. Today, we read a book about Shabbot, in which many students celebrate on Fridays.

During writing we practiced making Mat Man with the same sticks and curves we make with our letters. This activity helps us to draw people in our illustrations for writing. Students practiced and brought them home today.

We also talked about stretching out our words and hearing all the sounds when writing. Students were writing sentences at choice time today. I was SO thrilled to see them so excited to be writing words!

We had a brain break and practiced counting to 100 with exercise! Jack Hartmann has great videos on YouTube to get our bodies moving!

Each week for calendar we look closer at the calendar days and add a paperclip to our chain! Each of the buckets is full of each child's birthday that we move to the calendar.

We started class jobs this week. Students helped out in many different ways around the classroom!

We are working on being productive at our centers at a voice volume center, so I can soon start to pull small groups for reading.

Sight Word Center: students dot-dot the words and read the poems we read during our shared reading time