All About Us

This week we became familiar with new friends and new routines. We started the week off learning our first color word; red. The students wore red on Monday and we watched the. Red Song on YouTube at the beginning of each day. After making our RED anchor chart as a whole group, the students completed their first journal entry about things that are red.  Right now, the students are only expected to express their thoughts with drawings and are encouraged to add details. As they learn more letter sounds and sight words, they will be expected to write letters and words to go along with their detailed drawings.

   We focused most of our whole group writing on the kids themselves. We shared our names, our ages, and our favorite colors. We wrote the information in sentences to reinforce the conventions of print (how to follow text, purpose of punctuation, words being separated by space, etc) that we are also learning in reading groups. We rearranged mixed-up sentences as a group to make "I like" statements about our favorite colors. Then the students constructed their own sentences about their favorite color in their 2nd journal entry.

   The students learned a very exciting part of our class routine this week- CENTERS! This is the core of our individual instruction. Students go through three rotations. One rotation is spent in a reading group with students who have similar instructional needs. We read, reread, and work on the letter/phonics rule of the week. The other two rotations are spent in independent centers. These include floor puzzles, blocks, handwriting, read-to-self, computer, letter/word work, number work, and math games. By the end of the day on Thursday, the students have completed all independent centers. By the way, each center's task changes every week so the students will be challenged and can discover new content in a fun, hands-on way.

    We wrapped up the week with our first Fun Friday. Because centers are finished on Thursday, we spend that time on Friday working on an art project that reflects a theme of the week. The students colored an "All About Me" pennant which has a photo of them from their first day of school and has facts and favorites listed on it. These are hung on our hallway bulletin board.  They will be laminated and sent home in 3-4 weeks when I'm ready to change up the bulletin board again.

    We have had a blast this week and have learned a lot already. I can't wait to see how much we'll learn and grow this year!