Getting Ready to Read and Write

This week we had discussions about the books we read and and made some whole group journal entries.  In a few weeks, the students will begin working in their daily journals.  This week we learned how to draw pictures to show meaning and how we can label our pictures with letter sounds to give more information. 

Another way the students are learning to write and read is through our daily Super Star time.  Everyday we have a new student super star and they tell us information about themselves as I write it down.  The super star reads their finished chart to the class, and the class reads the chart back to the super star. The sentences all have the same structure so the students are becoming very familiar with the direction we follow when reading and writing, recognizing words are separated  spaces (I use a "Space Man"), and finding the beginning and ending of sentences.  

Then the student gets to take home their chart at the end of the day!

We finally got to learn how to use our Book Buckets this week.  These buckets are filled with books the students have already read such as the letter books they've brought home and the color books which we make each Friday. We practiced today how to read quietly to ourselves using the Whisper-ma-Phones to amplify our soft voices.  We talked about building up our reading stamina.  The students' goal is to read for as long as they can without giving up. This may be just a few minutes at first but we hope to get up to 15 minutes by the end of the year.  They did FABULOUS with this today!  They will start using their Book Buckets during center time next week.

     Hmmmm, so what else did we do this week? 

Well, we learned the right way to ride a bus.  This was super-exciting to all of our non-bus riding students.  Just to get the chance to sit on a bus made their day!

We also had some super fun centers.  In math games, they had to "crack the secret code" by lacing pool noodle rounds with numbers written on them according to the secret code they selected.  In the word work center, they made capital letters on geoboards with rubberbands.

For our art project, the students practiced their cutting and gluing skills.  They cut out a picture of an egg and a frog and used little sticks of construction paper to form a capital E and capital F.  So simple - but it was such a hit with the kiddos.
We can always use extra hands during our art time. 
If you can ever come in to help on Fridays, we would be super appreciative!