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.

Wide Mouth Frog Retelling

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.

Brayden Reads a Book

Bee-Wards Fun

Halloween Buddies

Fall Walk

September Writing Workshop

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.

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