September Reading 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.

My D'Nealian Fonts Answer

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.

Welcome to the new school year

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!

Student Self-Portraits

Kindergarten Writing

Teachers

Check out the teacher link on the right. I am documenting all the technology I am using in the classroom.

Benny's Message

This was Benny's morning message on the Digital Notebook. I got a toy. There is pizza today. Love, Benny

Patricia's Writing

My Dog and my Puppy
They love my moms flowers. They say they are pretty. They are very,very pretty.

March 18, 2008 Karlee's Message

Karlee was the student of the day. She wrote the message using the digital notebook. We read her message and used it for a lesson.

March 14, 2008

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.

March 13. 2008

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.

Read Around the Planet

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.