Kacsko's Kiddos: Ch-Ch-Changes!

The last two weeks we have been learning all kinds of new routines and working for new incentives. We have started tracking daily behavior with Class Dojo which the students love. Once the students have accumulated enough Dojo points for their good behavior, they earn special rewards:

The students have also been putting their folders in their new weekly home. So that means no more remembering/forgetting them everyday! They collect their classwork throughout the week and bring it home with the all-important newsletter on Fridays.

Another new incentive was made to help the students (re)learn their sight words. It is easy to forget them over the two week Christmas break. To remedy this, the students are participating in sight word karate. For the last week, they've practiced the first 14 sight words that were introduced in August and September while in the classroom and were encouraged to also study them at home. We had MANY who passed their first belt test today, earning their white belt for knowing the first 14 sight words. They got to sign their name on the giant white belt that will be part of a hallway display and got their white belts tied around their waist. We will test next Friday on the yellow belt and will retest the students who are still working on their white belt.

And finally, the students now have their own account on www.raz-kids.com
which they can access on a computer or through the app for ipad (I'm not sure if its available for other tablets). This is a wonderful website which increases reading fluency in a fun way. The students in the PM class have had a brief tutorial on it but the AM class has not yet been coached on it. We will be using it next week in the ipad center, though, so your child can become familiar with it. This is a great tool for snow days and long breaks from school. The more the student reads, the more points they get to use to furnish their "rocket room" and build robots. Those in the AM class log-in under the teacher name rlukacsko. Those in the PM class will log-in with the teacher name rlukacskoa (notice the 'a' on the end).

And now for what we've been learning and doing in the classroom. This week was all about opposites. We sang along to this song everyday and made a list of the opposite words we found in the books we read.

The students paired opposites together in the puzzle center this week. At the end of the week, the students were each given a word and had to find their opposite partner.

Then they read their words to the class.

The students also wrote about a pair of opposites: inside and outside. The students told their favorite outdoor recess activity and their favorite indoor recess activity. Here are Sophia C.'s favorites.

In literacy, the students have learned what the vowels are and how they make two sounds; short and long. These last two weeks, we have been reviewing the short vowel sounds, especially in CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words.

On Fun Friday, we did a write the room activity where each child was assigned a vowel and had to write only words that contained that sound. This is always a favorite of theirs and mine!

For centers this week, the students matched up pairs of mittens in the the number work area. They had to find the sum to an addition problem or recognize the amount in a ten frame.

In the math games center, they worked on subtracting. The students started with twenty snowballs and spun a number to subtract. First one to zero was the winner. This week was the first time they'd ever worked exclusively with subtraction so the goal was to get them familiar with the fact that subtracting leaves you with less.

The students worked with the short vowel sounds in the word work center. They could choose their level: matching the letters to create the word, or flipping the card over and figuring out the missing sound.

The students did a sight word sort (using the "white belt" words) in the writing center and got to use a really cool rainbow-colored pencil. By the way, one of the special pencils-black and glittery on the outside- mysteriously vanished after a few days of centers. If you happen to find this pencil in your child's backpack, please send it back in. Actually. several items have turned up missing here lately (glittery pom pom balls, numbered mittens for the math games) so if you could check through pockets and backpacks, we'd appreciate it.

Last week, our theme was WINTER. We identified the signs of winter and discussed the clothes we wear and the things we do.

The students wrote about these things in their journals. Here are some of Tommy's writings.

And Sophia's...

We also read "The Mitten" by Jan Brett- a story about a mitten that is lost in the snow and becomes a warm and cozy home for the animals in the woods. Afterward, the students wrote about whether they wore gloves or mittens. We are working on adding more to our sentences now so the students were encouraged to answer the question first then to give more information, such as what color their gloves/mittens are. Oliver did a great job with this.

In the math games center last week they played a wintery game - A SNOWBALL FIGHT! This game built up their knowledge of teen numbers and how they are constructed. The students each picked a snowball up and revealed a teen number between 10 and 20. They recorded their number and their partner's number, then drew the amount in ten frames. They decided who had more and that student got to throw their snowball first - hoping to hit one of the winter friends targets taped to the table). This was quite fun - as you can see by Morgan's intensely fun face.

In the number work center, the students built a snowman piece by piece, rolling the dice and adding the numbers.

Word work was a familiar task - stringing the sight words using letter beads.

And in the puzzle center, the students put CVC words together.

Since we missed a day last week, the students didn't get to have a true Fun Friday with an art project. So this Friday, we combined last week's and this week's themes to make one cool art project. The students cut out and colored mittens. Then they put opposites into the mittens ("go" went on the left mitten, "stop" went on the right mitten and so on).