Hello Wonderful Kinder Families! It has been a big and exciting month of Kindergarten. Over the last four weeks, we have been working on building a strong and caring classroom community. We have worked on establishing daily routines and rituals as well as everyday procedures. We have also made time to ask many questions, investigate, move, sing, dance, and play! We have an intelligent, funny, and delightful group of children in Room 143. Check out the highlights of our first month in Kindergarten. Peaceful Friends: Our First Community Building ProjectIn our first Community Building project of the year, we investigated the following questions:
Our Kinders explored a variety of mindfulness practices. Check out some examples below: They also learned a variety of calming strategies. We also read an amazing book titled, Have You Filled a Bucket Today? The book explains that everyone has an invisible bucket which holds our feelings about ourselves. When our buckets are full, we feel happy. When our buckets are empty, we feel bad. The book provides concrete examples of how to be "Bucket Fillers" such as sharing, using kind words, helping one another, etc. To remind us to be "Peaceful Friends," our Kinders individually created peace pendants. Using Shrinky Dinks and permanent markers, each child drew their own definition of peace. We then strung the pendant at the end of a beautifully beaded string. Through the creation of this beautiful product, our Kinders practiced fine motor skills and giving and accepting critique. Reader's Workshop: We are Readers!In all grades K-5 at HTeCV, we are incorporating the Reader's Workshop model from Columbia's Teachers College. In Reader's Workshop, I lead a variety of mini lessons focused on important reading behaviors, strategies, and skills. Over the last month, we practiced Reader's Workshop norms, introduced "Learn About the World" books (non fiction), and practiced non fiction reading behaviors. Math Workshop: Developing Number SenseIn Kindergarten, Math Workshop is play based with a "hands on, minds on" approach. This approach is enjoyable and engaging; math manipulatives allow students to construct their own models of abstract mathematical concepts. This last month, we focused on counting, reading, writing, and representing numbers to 10. We also started our work with ST Math, an innovative school-wide Math program which allows students to practice essential grade level math skills in a fun and interactive format. Learning with NatureWe are fortunate that our school is situated next to the beautiful Otay Valley. This year in Kindergarten, we will take weekly nature walks exploring our neighboring canyon. This month, we explored our school gardens and the native plants found around our school. We focused on practicing our Explorer Norms:
Cross Age Partnerships: 6th Grade BuddiesThis year, we will be collaborating weekly with Mr. Mac's Sixth Graders. They will be supporting us with project critique and partner reading. Through these partnerships, our Kinders are able to enhance their work and develop trusting relationships with peers within our High Tech High village. Check out this video of us learning our High Tech Elementary song: It has been a busy and magical first month of Kindergarten. During this next trimester, we will begin our new project tentatively called "KINDer Power."
To another great month of learning! With Love, Mrs. Rosemarie
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Hello Lovely Kindergarten Families! I am proud to announce that we have completed our first published book of the year, The ABC's of Us. Our Kinders have spent the last couple weeks working on their page and engaging in many community building tasks and literacy rich activities. The class decided to use a mixed media approach to their illustrations. The result is a bright, whimsical alphabet book that describes who we are a community. We are excited to share our book at our ABC's of Us Exhibition: An Alphabet Workshop and Book Release Party. It will be held in our classroom on Thursday, November 17th at 5:00 p.m. Our Kinders look forward to sharing what the have learned about letters and sounds, kindness, and writing and illustrating a book. Hope to see you all there! Here are some project highlights from the last two weeks: Our ABC experts look forward to sharing our work with you at our Fall Exhibition! We hope to see you all there!
Here are some highlights from our week's project work. Through these tasks, we incorporate Social Emotional Learning, Art, and Literacy. The majority of our work around kindness came about from this sweet book called The Kindness Quilt by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace. In this story, the main character engages in a "Kindness Project" with her classmates. Through this project, they are encouraged to commit a kind act and then document the action in a drawing. She takes it a step further by creating a small "Kindness Quilt." The beautiful illustrations and story inspired our students greatly! We brainstormed how we can be kind to others in the classroom and created our own "Classroom Kindness Quilt!" We have finally added all of our words to our "ABC's of Us Word Wall." Our word wall is "living," constantly being added to, and interactive. During the day, our Kinders use this wall to celebrate when they see friends demonstrating any of our word wall words. Check out how many friends were caught being flexible and kind! Lastly, to decide how to format our pages in our ABC's of Us alphabet book, we examined the formatting in the ABC books in our library. We noticed colorful illustrations, illustrations matching the words, and each letter being represented on each page in a special way (bigger size, different color, etc.). Check out our slide show below: We will put the finishing touches on our own ABC book over the next week!
With Love, Mrs. Rosemarie Hello Wonderful Kinder Families! Two weeks ago, we officially launched our first Kindergarten project with a special scavenger hunt around the school. Using our "letter knowledge," we answered a variety of clues hidden around the school. This launch was especially exciting as we found ourselves all over the K8 building! At each stop, we were given a letter, which would help us figure out the focus of our project. When we gathered all the letters, we went back to our classroom and worked together to unscramble the secret message. The focus of our project would be: The ABC's of Us! But what did that mean? We examined a variety of alphabet books to figure it out. Through our investigation, we discovered that alphabet books dedicated each page to a specific letter of the alphabet and that alphabet books could be about a certain topic. We also looked at the alphabet book that my last year's class had published. After looking through a book that was written and illustrated by Kindergartners, there was a special buzz in the air. Our Kinders were inspired! Several children asked, "Mrs. Rosemarie, can we do that? Can we write our own book?" The children got even more excited when Molly pointed out the barcode and said "Look! They made it so people can buy their book!" I responded, "Of course we can do that! And we can publish it so people can buy it!" And now, here we are! The ABC's of Us is in full swing! In this project, our Kinders will investigate the following Essential Question: Who are we? How can the ABC's help us express ourselves? Our Kinders will learn about one another, establish and practice community values (kindness, empathy, patience, flexibility, grit), and ultimately use this knowledge to write a community alphabet book. To prepare for the publishing of our first book, our Kinders write daily about our "Student of the Day" and practice letter sounds, sight word recognition, and writing in our Literacy Investigations. Everyday, our students get valuable letter practice by figuring our mystery Student of the Day. Students must unscramble the letters and use their deductive reasoning skills to figure out who the mystery student is. During this time, students are naming, matching, and having conversations around letters in their names. After they figure out the Student of the Day, they practice their questioning skills by interviewing the student. Afterwards, we work together on an interactive writing piece about the Student of the Day. The interactive writing process allows children to practice using resources, write high frequency words, and apply their knowledge of letters and sounds. The interview process allows them to find out fun facts about that person. Many children find out that they share the same favorite food, enjoy the same movies, or share a favorite song. We also use this time to discuss positive character traits such as kindness and flexibility. Afterwards, every student writes about our Student of the Day, which is then stapled together in a book that our Student of the Day can take home. Our students are working on adding to our ABC's of Us Word Wall. We are adding words that describe us as a community (Ex. A is artistic, T is for talented, F is friend). Here students are taking words from our brainstorm lists, writing them on a notecard, and organizing them under the appropriate letter on our wall. Here our students are sorting objects and words by initial sound. These sorts are also anchored by our past Students of the Day. On the left, M practices writing words that begin with the letter M like "Molly." On the right, J and D sort objects in the "D for Dylan" pile or the "A for Adam, Adeleine, Amber, and Alejandro" pile. This week, we introduced two new Literacy Investigations focused on sight word practice: Sight Word Stamp and Find the Button! In Sight Word Stamp, students practice reading, writing, and stamping sight words. Find the Button is another fun way to practice reading sight words. In this team game, one student hides a button behind a sight word written on a card. The remaining students have to guess where the button is hiding by reading the sight it could be behind ("I think it is behind the word like.") All of these tasks build the foundation towards our final product. We will continue our work in our Literacy Investigations, look more closely at ABC books, and learn more about the positive traits that describe our community. I look forward to starting our alphabet book! It will be Amazing!
With Love, Mrs. Rosemarie Hello Wonderful Kinder Families! This week's blog entry is focused on another important and essential part of our day in Kindergarten: Math Workshop. The primary focus of our Math Workshop this trimester is to develop number sense. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) define number sense as follows: “Number sense refers to a person's general understanding of number and operations along with the ability to use his understanding in flexible ways to make mathematical judgments and to develop useful strategies for solving complex problems (Burton, 1993; Reys, 1991). As a result, our work this trimester will focus on counting, writing, representing, and comparing numbers to 20. We will also identify and describe two-dimensional and three-dimensional figures. In Kindergarten, Math Workshop is play based with a "hands on, minds on" approach. This approach is enjoyable and engaging; math manipulatives allow students to construct their own models of abstract mathematical concepts and make them more concrete. We are playing a variety of partner games during Math Workshop as well. In Roll and Record, students roll a die, count the number of dots, and record the number it landed on. In Button Race, students use the "counting on" strategy to race to the number 10. In addition to practicing essential Kindergarten math skills, partner games allow practice in turn taking, patience, empathy, and flexible thinking. Lastly, our Kinders practice essential math skills through our amazing schoolwide computer program: ST Math. In ST Math, students have their own special passcode that stays with them until 5th grade. As a result, ST Math is customized to go along with the specific child's pace. Our Kinders are still in the early phases of ST Math and will have access to ST Math at home in a few weeks. We try to end each Math Workshop in a Reflection Circle. During this time, children share celebrations, challenges, or something new they learned. As the year progresses and our Kinders become more fluent writers, we will eventually begin reflecting in a Math Journal. In the meantime, I encourage you to talk with your child about his/her favorite station in Math Workshop. This week, I will introduce new tools, stations, and games which include using a 10 frame, counting natural materials, and incorporating playdough!
To Another Magical Week Ahead, Mrs. Rosemarie Hello Wonderful Kinder Families! This week, we began our work in a special chunk of time called, Investigations. During our Investigations, children self-select from a variety of activities designed to pique curiosity and "invite" discovery and exploration. Similar to our Exploration activities, most Investigations are open-ended by design and curated in an inviting manner. Our first week of Investigations built upon students' excitement around nature, names, and self-portraits. As soon as they walked in Tuesday morning, the Investigations were set up on our tables. They were all immediately drawn to them and I could hear the excitement in their conversations with one another: "Ooh! We get to paint today!!" "Wow! It's going to be fun today!" Our Investigations: Self-Portraits, Names, and NatureIn this station, children use "loose parts" to create Transient Art. During this time, students created nature self-portraits and circular patterns/mandalas. Loose parts provide many opportunities for open ended play and fine motor skill development. We are always in need of loose parts. Natural elements like seeds, pebbles, sticks, etc. are of great value to us! On your next nature walk, please consider grabbing some "treasures" to add to our growing collection. You can read more about the theory of loose parts here: http://www.aneverydaystory.com/2013/03/05/the-theory-of-loose-parts/ These Investigations are nature inspired. In the top row, students investigate clippings of native plants found in our neighboring canyon. Using magnifying glasses, they document the characteristics of each plant. In the middle row, students create a nature mobile using the treasures they found on our last nature walk. In the last row, students investigate a variety of rocks. Some children created animals out of rocks, while others counted, created patterns, and balanced (the record for the most rocks balanced belongs to Adam with 4 rocks!). In our Literacy Investigations, students can practice spelling each other's names, forming uppercase letters, and sounding out the initial sounds found in our friend's names. In this Investigation, students are sorting objects in a "M for Molly" pile or a "B for Bryson" pile. They can then practice writing each word. Here is a brief video of our Investigations time in action: The purpose of Investigations is to foster innovation, creativity, problem solving, risk taking as well as practice essential Kindergarten skills (emergent literacy, number sense, fine motor skills, social emotional skills, etc.). Our Kinders have had thoughtful reflections about their learning during our Investigations and truly look forward to this time.
To Another Magical Week, Mrs. Rosemarie Hello Lovely Kinder Families! This week we continued with our "All About Me!" mini project and began an exploration of names. We know that names are not only comprised of letters, but of hopes and dreams as well. For read aloud, we read two books centered around name origins: Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes and The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi. Both books explore the stories behind names, the feelings associated with our names, and what names represent (connection, family history, etc.). Both stories explored the sense of pride we can have when we truly love our names. We were inspired! We wanted to know more about our own name stories. We learned that Molly was born on a snowy day which is why her name is Molly Snow. Dylan shared that all of his siblings (himself included) have a middle name that begins with "S." We also learned that Leonidas was named after a King! We look forward to hearing more name stories in the next week. We continued our name exploration by singing name recognition songs (ask your child about "5 Little Muffins in the Bakery Shop") and by representing our names in a beautiful and unique way--beans!! By manipulating small objects, our Kinders develop their fine motor skills which in turn helps them with their handwriting! This week we also continued our "Learning with Nature" work. We took another trip to the Butterfly Garden where we used our "Eagle Eye" to find objects to observe and document. I noticed children taking field notes on the beautiful flowers, butterflies, and the many insects scurrying about By using the Butterfly Garden as our outdoor classroom, children learn the art of slowing down and looking closely. By finding details in the natural world, they begin to notice patterns and make connections. For instance, one child wondered and then hypothesized, "Why aren't there any butterflies out? Maybe because it isn't hot?" Later when Xavier found a monarch caterpillar all curled up and possibly dead, we decided to bring it back to our Curiosity Corner for further investigation. But by the time we made it back to our room, the caterpillar had stretched out and we realized quickly that it was alive! It was definitely weak and hurt, but it was alive. The children had many theories: "I think it was sleeping!" "I think it was playing dead. Possums do that!" "I think it was pretending when it saw us!" We are already engaging in rich conversations about the natural world and I am looking forward to what our next adventure will bring. And lastly, our Kinders have been working hard on developing our own special alphabet. Every year, the students in my class create their own classroom alphabet and this year is is a bit different from years prior. It has definitely been the most fun! Here's a little sneak peek: To another week of magic, exploration, and discovery!
With Love, Mrs. Rosemarie Hello Wonderful Kinder Families! This week in Kindergarten, we began exploring our identities and what makes us special. We talked about all the ways people look different and celebrated those differences as ways we are unique. The children noted that we had differences in hair color and its texture. They noted differences in shapes of eyes and their colors. They also noticed differences in skin color and body shapes (tall, petite, etc.) They then began the first drafts of their self-portraits and used mirrors to help them identify the details in their faces. Later in the week, we revisited our self-portraits and found so many beautiful differences between us. We found that some friends colored their skin brown while other friends colored their skin peach. We also noticed that some friends had colored their skin orange. When we asked why she made that color choice, she replied, "Because I couldn't find my color." We all searched the crayon box for a shade of brown in between the Crayola peach and Crayola brown and could not find a shade close to her color (I couldn't find a shade close to mine as well!). We all agreed that our friends were not muppets and should not have to color their pictures orange. We began to problem solve and someone suggested mixing colors. The next day, we listened to the story, The Color of Us by Karen Katz. In the story, a little girl wants to draw a picture of herself with a brown crayon, but her mom, who is also an artist, points out that brown isn't just brown. She shows her that there are many shades of brown from cinnamon and clay to ochre and sienna. To create an even more beautiful second draft, our Kinders learned about the "Critique" process. When we give each other "critique," we make sure that our feedback is 1) Kind: We make sure we keep our friends' feelings in mind. 2) Helpful: Our feedback is meant to be constructive. 3) Specific: We tell our friends' exactly how to improve their work. We look forward to sharing our self-portraits and the other ways we have expressed identity and our uniqueness. We hope to see you all at our Open House on Friday, September 16, 2016 at 5:00 p.m.
To Another Magical Week Together, Mrs. Rosemarie Hello Wonderful Kinder Families! I would like to extend a warm welcome to Kindergarten! We had an amazing week together and I am looking forward to an incredible year. Community, friendship, exploration, and play defined our first week together in Kindergarten. This week we engaged in a variety of community building activities and established our classroom norms: 1. Take care of yourself. 2. Take care of each other. 3. Take care of your space. Our Kinders also practiced many classroom rituals, routines, and procedures. Here are some highlights from the week: We took our first nature walk of the year to the school Butterfly Garden. Here we practiced our "Explorer Norms," greeted nature, and collected many "nature treasures" to add to our Curiosity Corner in the classroom. We will continue to take nature walks weekly throughout the year. These walks not only help children develop a deep appreciation for nature, but also serve as inspiration for projects, art, and discussion. There is so much deep learning that happens on these walks! And lastly, a large part of our day is dedicated to the work of the child or what Albert Einstein calls "the highest form of research" and that is play! Our projects are rooted in wonder and play and our Exploration Time is dedicated to just that. Through play, children not only develop friendships and important social skills, but it also allows them to practice emotional regulation and time management. Through play, children explore, take risks, and construct meaning. Children who engage in quality play experiences are more likely to have well-developed memory skills, language development, and are able to regulate their behavior, leading to enhanced school adjustment and academic learning (Bodrova & Leong, 2005). What an amazing week! I can't wait to see what the next week has in store for us!
With Love, Mrs. Rosemarie Hello Lovely Kindergarten Families! Firstly, I would like to thank all of you for helping make our Publishing Party a great success! The Kindergartners were incredibly proud to share their work with their families and friends. I was so proud to see them read their work and speak confidently about their illustrations and families. A key component to project-based learning is creating and sharing our work for an audience. It is a great achievement that our Kinders have already done this in the 4th week of school! Thank you again for making this day so very positive and special for them! I will be publishing their writing in our first class book of the year. The book will be available for purchase so please be on the look out for my email with the corresponding link. I plan to send it out by the end of the week. Check out some pictures of our Publishing Party. We had a great turnout! Math Workshop and Literacy HighlightsThis week in Math Workshop, we added two new stations: Grab and Count and Button Station. Both centers focus on counting and representing numbers to 20. This week we also practiced reading and writing the sight words: "I am..." by creating an "I Am" book. We generated a list of words to describe ourselves and used our list to help us with our writing. Student-generated word lists, sentences, and stories are one of the many ways young children learn to read and write. Here is Royal reading from his "I Am" book: We have had a busy week and can't wait to share more of our learning with you!
Warmest Regards, Mrs. Rosemarie |
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September 2017
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