Morning Exploring: Super Why phonics/reading on iPads (FABULOUS app I highly recommend!), Identifying larger numbers out of a pair, fine motor math: making winter items with pattern blocks/making 10 icicles on the house, composing/decomposing numbers 2-10 fine motor with gems, hands on building.
Reading: This week in reader's workshop we discussed the importance of comprehending the books we read (tricky for a lot of them to book talk at this age) and using beginning sounds to decode words. We use the prompt: "Get your mouth ready for the first sound" if we get to an unknown word and then ask our selves: Does it look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense?
Math Workshop: Learned to play "Build it, Change it"--great game for home! Talked about dissecting a story problem to find out what a question is asking us to do and worked with math tiles to create arrangements of 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 to start leading in to composing/decomposing numbers.
Writing: Our focus right now is making sure our writing is "easy to read." This means we should be double checking our sentence structures, stretch words out, use our word wall for sight words, adding detailed pictures with speech bubbles and labels and making sure it makes sense. If we find it isn't readable or doesn't make sense we should go back and fix it!
Phonics: We are working with blends/digraphs and beginning/middle/end sounds making sure we use vowels. I've also introduced "wacky y" (as i/e), bossy r, "ing" and vowel teams just casually through whole group lessons.
Social Emotional Skills: Problem solving BEFORE involving an adult (especially using our "I messages") and treating everyone with respect.
Tips for Home: Book talk at home: characters, setting, what happened in the begging/middle/end, what was the book mostly about...
Morning Exploring: Sight word fine motor, sensory table: winter ice literacy, math fine motor, New Years cut/glue/trace, ABC uppercase order
Reading: New powers: pattern power and being careful to notice when the author changes the pattern in a story, checking for understanding by asking ourselves: Does it make sense? Does it sound right? Does it look right?
Math: Numbers 1-20 what comes before/after, number towers with cubes and dominoes, Moose Math, Racing Bears game (this is an easy and fun game to play and you can find it for free online to print and play at home!--Please let me know if you'd like to borrow ours with supplies and I'd gladly send home), roll 2 dice and record 1-12. We also did subitizing and some fancy vocabulary and skills with math chats (see Instagram).
Writing: We started new true stories this week and focused on using our resources and tools: word wall, stretching words out, using an ABC chart, making sure we have a vowel in our words, blends/digraphs chart and continuing to be sure our sentence structure is correct and we have detailed pictures that tell who/what/where.
Social Skills: We were all about Jaguar PRIDE this week! I really loved the definition of respect that came up in a clip we watched: treating others like they're loved, cared for and important. We've continued to use that language and make it powerful in our classroom. We focused on following directions the FIRST time and actually earned some Friday FUN Free time today from our Classroom BINGO chart. We only earned a square for the whole class showing PRIDE, following directions the first time or me catching kindness!
Coming Up: Next week we'll be NWEA testing and reading level assessing. Please be sure students are getting a good night's sleep and a healthy breakfasts! Health will start next week and we'll have 8 sessions (every Tuesday).
Tips For Home: Give your child a number and asks what comes before/after. Look for sight words, blends, word families...in books you read :)
