Our shared reading began with identifying/listing the clothes we put on to play in the snow. We read "The Hat" by Jan Brett and "The Jacket I Wear in the Snow" by Shirley Neitzel. We made an anchor chart as a whole group to go along with it, and on Friday, the students took the topic to their journals. Mrs. Taylor and I were very impressed with their work! We weren't sure what they would be able to do after having 3 weeks off. Turns out, they hadn't missed a beat. We saw the same results after reading books about fun snow day activities. First we read the Ezra Jack Keats classic "The Snowy Day." The next day, we read "Snow Day" by Betsy Maestro. Again, we made an anchor chart about the activities the students did or wanted to do on the next snow day. (And wouldn't you know it, the very next day was another snow day)! Here are some samples of the students work.
And take a look at the progress below. This is a student's journal writing from September (on the left) where he attempted a few letters and then traced the sentence we wrote for him. And on the right is what he was able to do ALL BY HIMSELF this week!
As I said, our focus this week was on the five short vowel sounds and subtraction. The students sang along to this music video everyday at the start of class. This video is not only great for teaching the five short vowel sounds, but it also reinforces how we learned to sound out words long before the break.
At the beginning of group math time, we sang along to this crowd pleaser to learn all about subtraction.
Centers got a little remodel this week as our class is now home to a real, guided reading table! We made due before with a rectangular table but it was not ideal. Thanks to our principal, our school now has several of these babies to make reading groups much more efficient!
In the Math Games center, the students got to build a snowman. (And I sang the song from Frozen "Do You Wanna Build a Snowman?" over and over...). This game works on addition skills. The students roll two dice, add them together, and get the coordinating piece.
In the Work on Writing center, the students rolled a dice that coordinated with one of six sight words. They got to use colored pencils to write the words in a table form. (Writing with colored pencils is kind of a big deal. Not writing-with-markers big, but close).
In the Word Work center, the students decoded (or sounded out) CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant) and placed them on top of their matching pictures.
Finally, we wrapped up the week with Fun Friday (but it was really on a Wednesday)! As always, we had a fun craft activity. The students wrote each letter of their name on a snowball (a white circle) and added one more snowball to the top on which they drew a snowman's face (with markers -squeal!). Then they assembled their snowman adding a hat and scarf. This reinforced our math goal of measuring length and height and ordering/comparing the sizes. We arranged their snowmen from shortest to tallest on the bulletin board outside our classroom. The students can see that the fewer the letters in a name, the shorter the snowman. I didn't get to take a picture of the finished product (blame that snow day!) but I will include one on next week's post.
Now that we're back in the saddle again, I expect some great learning progress in the weeks ahead. Many students are right on the cuff of becoming proficient readers. The steady of routine of reading is what will get them there.
Before I go, I want to recognize Tyler Malicote and Preskutt VanAntwerp. They received the Fairness Award in their classes because they so frequently display this characteristic when playing with their classmates. I am very proud of them! We are now learning what it means to be trustworthy. And next month, two new students will receive an award in front of the whole school.
(erallR
