On-Site Job Training

This week, we learned all about community helpers. Each day, as we gathered together in front of the white board, we read through our anchor chart to find a new community helper standing behind the door.

 Just like community helpers have special tools to do their jobs, the students received their first two tools to do a big job themselves: READING!  The students were introduced to "Lips the Fish" who tells us to get our lips ready to make the first sound of an unknown word. Along with that tool, they learned how to use their "Owl Eyes" which reminds us to look at the pictures for help.  For example, on the second day, we read, "Look! We see a ..." and then the students stopped at the /d/ sound.  I explained that right now, we aren't ready to sound out all the rest of the letters to figure it out.  So I encouraged the students to think of community helpers that started with the /d/ sound. They came up with doctor, dentist, and doorman.  Then we opened the door and used the picture to help us know for sure.

 Eventually, as our reading skills and phonics knowledge progress, they will no longer stop at the first sound, look at the picture and make a good guess. They will learn to sound out the whole word first and use the picture and other context clues to be sure. But for now, most of us will be using these two most basic strategies.
We read lots of books about school workers, doctors, firefighters, vets, and other community helpers. Some I read to them and some they heard and watched on a great website called Bookflix.  On this site, there is a fiction and a nonfiction pair of books to go along with one topic. The stories are animated with the text highlighted as its read at the bottom of the screen. This is a great way for students to learn print conventions (reading from left to right, top to bottom), fluency, expression, sentence structure, and to add to their bank of sight words. We use the fifteen minutes just before lunch to wind down and relax after the hustle and bustle of reading/writing centers to watch a Bookflix story.  Among the many watched this week, was the fictional story "Bark, George"- a hilarious tale of a dog with several things stuck inside him which have to be pulled out at the vet and we followed it up by watching a non-fiction book about real veterinarians.
Speaking of veterinarians, the students got their turn to be one in the fine motor center this week.  They played a game I call "Rescue Rover." The class pet ate all of the upper and lowercase letters. The students had to use a special tool to retrieve the letters and then sort them onto their corresponding alphabet arcs.

In the letter work center, the students pretended to be mail carriers.  They had a whole alphabet's worth of envelopes to deliver to the proper addresses.  I tried to make as many of them community helper names, but as it turns out, that just isn't possible. So I filled in the gaps with random careers, animals, and one Marvel Comics group: X-Men. Hey- they need to get their mail, too!

The students used a foam mat alphabet puzzle to construct 3D shapes and make houses - so we pretended they were construction workers.

In the math games center, they played dentist. Students rolled the dice and brushed that many teeth clean of the Expo marker stains (perhaps the patient had been eating Fun Dip or drinking an ICEE).

 

And the number work center went down on the farm this week. The little farmers had to retrieve eggs from a nest and sort them in numerical order in the egg carton.

And, at one of the four new centers added this week (I switched from eight independent centers to 12 this week so I could have smaller reading and math groups) the students got to be teachers and write on the white board! This is nearly every kindergarten student's dream come true (particularly the girls).

Johannah and Jocelyn wrote sight words.

Audrey made her own Super Star chart (My name is ...)

Here's a few pics of some of the other center work the students did this week.

 

Ava recreated Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!

We call Fridays "Fun Fridays" because that's when we do cool stuff like go to the computer lab (haven't done that yet- but will soon), do art projects, participate in STEM Labs, and we have a Shoup Showcase. We are fortunate enough to have the world-famous Theresa Shoup working in our room  for a few hours each day.  She is a phenomenal teacher and storyteller and is great with teaching social skills. This week, she taught the students how to compromise and mediate when they are not getting along or when they see their friends not getting along. There was some role-play, a hoe-down type song and dance, and some boy/girl partner artwork to reinforce everything they learned. She absolutely mesmerizes them!

She made get Mrs. Taylor get in on the hoe-down action!

For our art project this week - the students made a Community Helper mix-and-match flipbook featuring a doctor, a construction worker, a police officer, and a firefighter.Wanna see what a construction worker/doctor would look like? No problem!

Next week we will be exploring and discussing where we live and the places we go. Have a great Labor day weekend. I'll leave you with the obligatory Color Day photo. (PS, Tuesday is PURPLE day)!