Good evening!
I hope everyone is doing well :) These past couple of weeks have been pretty restless in our room! I think with the holiday break coming, students are more excited than ever. A break is definitely needed!
Here's a class picture from Wednesday :)
Winter Assembly
Today was our Winter Assembly! We had so much for performing our song, "I'm a Little Snowman" for you all. Thank you for coming to watch us! Students had a great time on stage :) Students looked great and did such a good job! I loved seeing their cute outfits :) I apologize on behalf of the stage crew- I don't know why it was so dark :( But I hope you got some great pictures and videos, anyway! I know how meaningful these moments are :)
We had the other Kindergarten teachers record us, so I will get that video up ASAP. In the meantime, here are some pictures!
January Calendar
Here is January's calendar for our class. I will be away on the 8th with my Junior Dance Team. More information regarding Family Literacy day will come in the new year :)
Our Final Lava Experiment
As a class, we voted on which was our favourite type of lava. Students chose experiment #3, "Elephant's Toothpaste"! We ran out of storage on the iPad mid-way, but we were able to capture a few seconds of our volcano erupting. I love their excitement! It was so much fun :) We hope to do more science experiments in the new year!
Birthday Wishes
I was so surprised when Miss Smith and the students brought me a homemade birthday card. What an amazing card! I was so happy that I got to spend my birthday with all of my friends in our class :) Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes! Thanks for reading the card for us, Courtney!
Going Undercover - Round 2
Here is a quick video I took during tidy up time. We are trying our best to help students stay on task and do what they're supposed to do.
Literacy Update
1. Two Walking Vowels
During our literacy lessons, we've been learning a lot about vowels. Vowels are really neat letters because they can make 2 different sounds (see Reading Package: Vowel Sounds vs. Vowel Names). When you can hear the vowel name in a word, that vowel it's getting some help from another vowel. For example, in the word 'goat', you hear the /O/ sound. You can hear the /O/ sound because there is an 'a' next to it. In the word 'home', you can hear the /O/ sound, too. In this case, the 'e' at the end is helping the 'O' say it's own name. This is really important to know when it comes to sounding out words and spelling. Vowels make their sounds in words a lot, but rarely do they do it on their own.
This week we learned that, "When 2 vowels go walkin', the 1st one does the talkin', and says its own name!". This week we learned about 'ee' and 'ea'.
When these two letters are next to each other, they will almost always make the name of the first vowel. Therefore, these letters together make the /E/ sound. So, when students are trying to sound out a word, they need to keep their eye out for what we call "2 walking vowels". Or, when they're trying to spell a word, they need to remember that if their hear the vowel name, there needs to be 2 vowels (the exception to this is in popcorn words such as he, me, etc.).
We've been practicing using our sound boxes to sound out some words together- a really great strategy! Some of our SKs don't need to use them anymore- they're noticing right off the bat that there are 2 walking vowels in a word. Awesome!
2. Popcorn Words: Round 4
We have finished going through each popcorn word and adding them to our word wall. The last round was the words that are phonetically "weird" and just need to be remembered based purely on sight. These words are: of, to, said, am, like, was, see. Continue to practice popcorn words with your child on a daily basis until they have mastered them :)
We introduced a new literacy centre today to help out with popcorn word recognition: a bean bag toss! Students have to take a word out of a bag, read it, and try to toss their bean bag on the corresponding plate. Or, a friend can read them a word without showing them and then they have to try and toss it. A fun and hands-on way to remember our 25 more important sight words :)
Fun in the Gym!
It looks like students have been having a lot of fun in the gym playing soccer! They've really enjoyed making soccer players in class using the K'nex, so it's great to see this theme happen in the gym, too!
That's all I have for now folks. Remember that Friday is our PJ day and class party- yay!!
See you tomorrow!
~ Miss Pliura
No comments:
Post a Comment