We had a great writing session this week. We tried sardines (one of our student's recommended snacks). We used our 5 senses to talk about our experience. We filled out our 5 senses chart and made a bubble map describing sardines. We also made a graph to show how many students liked/disliked them. After mapping and graphing, we wrote about sardines as a class. Then, the students did their own writing.
We participated in an online project this week. We had to get a pumpkin between 1-5 pounds, estimate and count the seeds. Classrooms from around the world participated in this project and posted their results. Our pumpkin weighed 4.5 pounds and we counted 376 seeds. We put the seeds into groups of ten to count them. Our estimations ranged from 1-275 seeds. As an extension in our classroom, we carved an 11 pound pumpkin, counted the seeds and compared the results. The bigger pumpkin had 578 seeds and our estimates ranged from 100-1,000,000. Before we counted the seeds, we made a graph to see how many students thought pumpkin 1 or pumpkin 2 had the most seeds. Most students thought the bigger pumpkin would have more seeds and they were right. Mrs. Keyser carved the pumpkins and we had a drawing for the pumpkins at our party. Ron Lee and Molly won the pumpkins. We also read Pumpkin, Pumpkin and did other related lessons. We made a bubble map to describe the pumpkin and made a double bubble map to compare the pumpkin and an apple. We read the Five pumpkin poem and each student illustrated the poem. We read how a pumpkin grows in the book and each student made a flow map to show how a pumpkin grows. We also used the recipe in the book to make pumpkin seeds and we ate them with our applesauce we made at the Halloween party. We made flow maps to show how we made the applesauce, too. This was a great project and I would encourage other classrooms to participate. Thanks to Marilyn Western for telling the computer class this summer about the site. We are definitely going to participate in more of the online projects.
The address for the internet project site is www.jenuinetech.com.
This week we compared apples to pumpkins. We made a double bubble map to compare and contrast apples and pumpkins. We made applesauce and made a flow map to show the sequence to make applesauce. We ate the applesauce at our Halloween party.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
I use the webcam to record students reading to the class. When viewing the video, I am able to quickly observe many reading skills. I look for directionality, one-to-one correspondence, sight words the student knows, what strategies students use to decode unknown words... Currently, we are working on getting our mouth ready and checking the picture to help us figure out unknown words. We also watch the video in class and discuss what we notice about the student's reading. It is a great way for students to think about their reading.
We read the Wide Mouth Frog story and acted the story out with puppets. Everyone had a chance to participate in the retelling. We also made bridge maps (on display in the media center) to show what each animal ate.
This is one of our writing workshop sessions. We have writing workshop everyday and the students are writing independently for 15-20 minutes at this time of year. I use the videos to assess writing behaviors and to evaluate writing workshop with the students. After I take the video, I show the students and we discuss writing workshop. We talk about "stars" (things we saw that were great)and "wishes" (what we think we could improve next time. The students saw many "star" behaviors and our wish was to improve the noise level during writing workshop.
I took this video so parents can see what we do during reading workshop. The students are "reading" independently for about 15 minutes at this time of year. I try to take videos periodically to use for evaluation purposes. I look at the videos and can tell who knows "how books work", how the students "read" and other reading behaviors. I also show the video to the class right after I take it. We watch it to evaluate our reading workshop. The students look for "stars" (things that are going well or students doing an exceptional job) and "wishes" (what isn't going so well and how could we change it). They are used to the camera and usually don't change their behavior because it is on. When we evaluated this video we had lots of "stars" and we decided we needed to work on the background noise. We will see if that improves in the next video.
I have been asked about programs for D'Nealian fonts. There are some free fonts out there, but I tried a couple and got some adware put on my computer. I went to fonts4teachers and bought one to put on my computer. I have it and you can check it out. If we like it, maybe we can get the site license. I also found a good sight for letter activities and tracer pages. Go to www.kidzone.ws and check it out. You can make tracer pages for students names, sight words, etc. It is very easy to use. This is also a good site for parents to go to. You will find lots of activities and ideas to hep your child learn their letters and sounds.
I am looking forward to the new year. The turnout at the Open House was AWESOME! 20 out of 23 families came to visit and look around. This is a sign of a great year with lots of involved families and excited students. This is going to be a great year!
Some changes were made in the classroom this summer. I turned one wall into a dry erase wall. We hung 2 sheets of melamine board and the whole wall is now a dry erase surface. This will allow the students to reach the board without using a step and it is also a great projection surface and works with the mimio interactive device. I added storage, cleaned out and organized and added lockers. The social studies committee ordered colorful rugs of the USA for each of the kindergarten classrooms. Everything is set and we are ready!
We did lots of reading and writing. We had peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Ms. Rosekrans even ate one and helped us describe what they tasted like. We made a graph of our favorite snack of the day. Eleven people liked them. We also played reading "game shows". Mrs. Sian brought back 2 new games from the conference. These will help us learn sight words, vocabulary, decoding skills and phonics skills. We went to virtual earth and looked at our school and some of our houses. Virtual earth has more close ups in Michigan than Google Earth. We could actually see our school and Mrs. Sian's swimming pool. Virtual Earth is a free download from Microsoft.
Today we went to the new class blog in computer class (www.siansclass.blogspot.com). It was fun. We voted and decided the zoo site was our favorite. Madison read "Green Eggs and Ham" to us. we went for a walk around the school because we had inside recess and we wanted to get exercise. We had writing work shop. Cameron wrote about spiderman. Tyler wrote about his brother and the play station. Libby wrote about going to Snowsnake with Alexys.
We participated in Read Around the Planet for reading month. We were matched with a class in Texas. Kay Hauck from the RESD brought in the equipment to hook us up so we could see them and they could see us. We wrote a book and each child read their page. Then, we listened to their presentation and had a chance to ask each other questions. The other school was Rusk Elementary in El Paso, Texas. We learned that they are close to the Mexican border and live in a very large city. They told us that it was going to be 75 that day and they would be able to go home and go swimming. Of course, we aren't so lucky. It was about 30 here that day, but we were due for another cold snap and had lots of snow. We told them that we could go sledding or skiing. It was a great experience! For teachers, check the teacher page for lesson details.
The students read the story they wrote during writing workshop.
Note: Some students were absent the day we videotaped. Look for another video from them soon. Also, if you are trying to view this at school, it may not load due to security settings. You can view it on teacher tube.
