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)!

Apples to Coconuts

This week we went a little nuts. COCO-nuts, that is. (Forgive me, I just had to).  We began the week reading the classic, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. You know the one where all the letters climb up the coconut tree?  Well, there is also a follow up book called Chicka Chicka 123 where numbers climb up an apple tree.  We read that one, too.  Since this week was all about comparing and contrasting to find likenesses and differences, we used these two stories to practice this skill.  The students chose pictures out of the bucket, showed it to the class, then we decided which book had those items. Sometimes, it was an item they shared, so the students were introduced to Venn diagrams to help organize our thoughts. 

That was done on YELLOW day, by the way :)

The next day, we read the follow up book to Mouse Paint (which we read last week), called Mouse Count.  Once again, we compared the stories using a bucket of pictures and a Venn diagram. 

We also discuss how things are alike and different everyday when I pull two things out of our alphabet mailbox. We learn two letters each week, so I pull out two items each day that begin with those sounds. This week we found 1)an elephant and a fox, 2) an egg and a fish, 3) an elbow and feet, 4)an envelope and a folder, and 5) an egg (again) and a football. So, you can see how the students can make comparisons. The students talk about the items with their "teaching partners," then they volunteer to share with the class. Their wheels are turning more and more everyday as we practice this skill. It's really neat to see!

We did lots more with the coconut and apple and finding how things are alike and different, but more on that in a minute.  Here's just a little of what we did in centers this week.

In the writing center, I used those student info forms that I had you guys fill out before school began to make a picture and word list of the students' favorite things. The students could choose from a variety of fun writing tools (Markers! Glitter pens! Pens shaped like animals!) and simply write a list of all of their favorite things.  It was a hit! 

In the letter work center, the students sorted out lowercase letters by how they're formed: all straight lines, all curvy lines, and both straight and curvy. They sorted them onto coconut trees (a la Chicka Chicka Boom Boom). They could also sort out the red, yellow, and blue letters into the coordinating jars (a la Mouse Paint), or they could play Letter Race (as Landon and Jayla are doing in the picture).

In the fine motor center, the students cut plastic straws and strung them onto red ribbon to make necklaces and bracelets. Some students wore theirs all week!  So- we'll definitely do that one again!

There is a magnet center during the literacy centers and the math centers. The only difference is the magnets they work with. In math, they get to design whatever they want with the base ten magnets and random shape magnets (it's more like an engineering and design center). We can already see lots of future engineers in the room!

In my guided math center, we worked on making amounts up to five in many different ways (5 + 0, 4+1, 3+2). The students are also working on representing amounts with drawings. 

At the sight word center, the students cut and paste the new sight words.  This will be the task at this center every week for a while. The format is familiar, but the words change every week. When they finish the task, they can put together sight word puzzles. This is one of the few centers that are project-oriented, meaning they should have a finished product at the end of the 10-15 minute period that they are there. 

In addition to this sight word center, we have sight word workshops four days a week. Unlike centers, the students get to choose the stations that most appeal to them.  They choose one of the seven stations each day. This way, the students can learn the sight words in the style that suits them best and avoid the stations that seem frustrating or boring to them.

These were their choices this week. For the ones who love to write there was....

White boards  

 Rainbow Words (spin the color spinner, trace the word in that color).

And Roll, Write, and Graph (which appeals to the 'gamers' too).

 

For the tactile learners, there was....

Sandpaper words and playdough words (which I forgot to take a picture of)

For the builders, there was pop cube words

And for the artsy ones, PAINT.

Each week I will change a few of the stations out, but I will always have 3-4 learning styles represented. I'm working on a hopscotch type game for my movers and shakers. 

Ok, now let's finish up with a bit more coconut stuff. 

So, after comparing the stories we'd read the first two days, we talked about our five senses. I had the children just use one - their sense of touch to describe what they felt in the mystery box. 

They mentioned that one item was big and one was small. One was scratchy and the other one was smooth.  But we decided they were both somewhat round. They were all able to guess that the small and smooth item was an apple - but they weren't able to guess the other. One guessed pineapple, another guessed a porcupine.  But once I pulled the coconut out, the light came on. Oh yeah! The Chicka Chicka Books!

 

The next day (Thursday) - we compared the fruits again using our five senses and talked about what was in the insides of them and how they tasted. Well we needed to see what was inside that coconut and taste it too! So we did. 

The boys were very much into the use of the hammer and screwdriver.

Sampling the coconut milk - it was unanimous - they didn't like it (The picture was pre-tasting)

There were a few fans of the fruit itself. 

Our final experience with alike/different and coconuts had to do with buoyancy. The students tested four round fruits; a plum, an apple, a coconut, and a watermelon.  The students told if they thought an item would sink or float using thumbs up (for floats) or thumbs down (for sinks) - because I try to do my part to decrease noise pollution. We were all surprised that the only fruit that sank was the smallest!

After our whole group experiment, the students got to test lots of random items back at their tables. And things got a little bit messy. But, thankfully, we have a Mother Hen in the room who LITERALLY cleaned it ALL up without even being asked to.  I mean - she wiped off every table, packed up all the items, even threw away the paper towels that had fallen on the floor. Shout out to Daleigha! (I wished I would have gotten a picture of her).

Lastly, we couldn't do a Chicka Chicka theme without an art and crafts activity!

Next week we will learn about community helpers and the students will become community helpers themselves in the classroom.  Check back in next week to see what fun we have.  

AND WEAR GREEN ON MONDAY!