Friday Update - January 17th, 2015

Good evening everyone!

I hope everyone is doing well. I apologize for the delay on my usual Friday post. I've been feeling a bit under the weather. We're still getting back into the swing of things here in Room 110 after 2 weeks off, and the cold weather has kept us cooped inside for the majority of the day! We hope to get back outside soon so students can let their energy out!

Here is an update on what we did this week!

Rules and Routines

Since our return from the break, some of us are forgetting or choosing not to do our daily 5 jobs. We spent one period going over the 5 jobs we do in the morning before we go to table or carpet activities. I've told students that I am no longer chasing after them for their important bags. We talked about how it's their responsibility to make sure I get it and the importance of handing it. There might be important notes for me, library books to be returned, and have their home reading books exchanged. In order to build more independence, ownership, and responsibility, I will no longer be checking their backpacks for their important bag.

We also spent time going over tidying up our learning centres and what it should look like. For example, picking up 10 blocks and moving them to another part of the carpet is not tidying up. We also discussed how if students see something on the ground that's out of place, that it is a nice thing to do to pick it up and put it away, even if they didn't put it there. We will continue to practice and monitor this!

Literacy Update

Q and U Stick like Glue!

Check out the video below to learn more about q and u! :)

Reading Strategy - Flip Flop Frog!

On Thursday we learned about a new reading strategy. We were introduced to "Flip Flop Frog". He reminds us to try and flip the vowel sounds in a word if it does make sense when sounding it out! Always try the vowel sound first and then the vowel name. This strategy applies to a lot of popcorn and balloon words. For example, when sounding out the word "go", try both vowel sounds for o until you hear a word that makes sense :)

Interactive Writing

We thought we would write a note to Mrs. Benedict's class asking if they would like to come play with us one day! We used our knowledge of popcorn words, balloon words, consonant buddies, and finger spacing to help us. We will deliver it to them next week :)

Further Help with Popcorn Words

Watch this brief video of popcorn words to see a bit more of how we teach them in our classroom and how to help your child remember them at home :)

Carpet Seating Plan

Miss Smith and I have decided that a seating plan on the carpet is necessary. We're noticing some students not paying attention on the carpet because they are distracted by their friends. This is distracting to others and it also prevents them from learning during our important literacy, math, and character education lessons. We're going to try it out for a bit to see how it works :)

Report Cards

Report cards are sent home on February 12th. Report cards in Kindergarten are quite different than other grades. Students don't receive any grades or 'marks'. They just receive comments. Report card comments are based on formal assessments (DRA), informal assessments (reading with them during learning centres), and daily observations. The following will be reported on for Term 2 report cards (Term 1 was parent observations).

Subject Area - Teacher Commenting

Personal and Social Development - M. Pliura

Language and Literacy Skills - M. Pliura

Mathematics - M. Pliura

Science and Technology - M. Pliura
Health - M. Pliura

Physical Education - D. Lane

The Arts (Visual) - M. Pliura

The Arts (Drama and Music) - M. Moore & M. Barber

Report cards are not meant to shock you, but validate what has already been communicated. I would love to sit down with you after report cards go home to discuss celebrations, concerns, and next steps :)

The Thinking Corner

We have recently implemented what we call "The Thinking Corner". This corner will have multiple purposes, but I thought I'd share with you the first two we've discussed as a class.

Time Out- Although it may not be the best way to prevent a child from doing something, when you have 30 little ones to watch over, sometimes it's your only option. We will be sending students to the "Thinking Chair" when they aren't following the class rules. This will a) keep other students safe and b) allow that student to think about what they were doing and how they could have done it better.

What Should I Do? - As a class, we've learned about a couple of things we can do when someone is bothering us. In an ideal world, asking someone to stop would result in them stopping. This, of course, doesn't always happen. On Thursday, Miss Smith and I modelled what to do when one of us wasn't sharing. Even after "using my words", Miss Smith still wouldn't share her iPad with me, so I decided to play with someone else who would be willing to share with me. We have a print out of our W.A.I.T strategies in a picture frame to help remind students of what to do in a social problem.

Our Current Inquiry

As some of you may have guessed from our last post, we've been interested in soccer lately, and countries that have soccer teams. It's been a big hit with both the girls and the boys!

We used media resources to design our own soccer field for our K'nex soccer players!

Designing a class flag!

We cut out some paper jerseys and told students that they could make their own soccer jerseys! It was nice to see some of our boys join us at creative :) 

 We've decided to take this interest in soccer and world teams to begin to learn more about countries, and specifically our heritage. How fun would it be to have a heritage day and learn about our home countries!? Lara found Turkey in our flag book!

Vienna, Juliette, and Courtney took an interest in looking at our new world map to try and find Canada!

We broke out the world map puzzle. Students loved it! We are excited to do more learning using the topic of the world and countries :)

Learning Naturally through Play

It's always so exciting to see how you can naturally incorporate learning during student play. No matter what students are doing, there are always ways to incorporate language, math, communication, and social experiences. Yesterday, we caught Lily, Lilly, and Izze play a matching game using some of our loose parts. We didn't even suggest the idea to them! I sat down with them to see what they were doing :)

The goal of the game was to find the matching loose parts under the bottle caps. Here are some things we were able to see during this game:

• Planning: Students creating an activity that incorporated memory 
• Knowledge of 1-1 correspondence: Students demonstrated 1 to 1 correspondence, meaning that only 1 loose part could go under one bottle cap
• Knowledge of even numbers: In order for each bottle cap to have a match, students recognized that each bottle cap needed a "friend"
• Ability to count: Students counting loose parts after the game to see how many points they had
• Knowledge of more or less: Students understood that the person with more points meant that they had won (ex. I had 10 points and Lilly had 6. I asked, "By how many more points did I win than you?" After calculating it in her head, Lilly responded with "4!"
• Co-operation: Students working together and playing fairly

What an awesome example of ways we can incorporate our learning during play. We can assess the same knowledge we would by doing a worksheet. Which one do you think is more meaningful to students?

Guest Speaker - Crafting!

On Friday, Nevaeha's mom joined us to share about her love of crafting! She told us that we can create anything if we used our imaginations! She showed us a lot of different costumes she's made. Afterwards, we got the opportunity to do some crafting ourselves! Students got the chance to make snow using baking soda and hair conditioner! It really felt like real snow, and our room smelled amazing!! She also brought in aprons for each student that I will send home on Monday and some more supplies for our creative centre. Thank you!

Weekly Pictures

Here are some random pictures we captured this week! :)

Updates and Reminders

• Friday, January 23rd is a PA Day. No school :)
• Please remember to send in utensils for your child's lunch, especially spoons! Also, please put all milk tickets in your child's lunch bag so it's ready for them at lunch.
• Information about Family Literacy Day will be going home this week.

Thank you for your continued support! Have an awesome weekend :)

~ Miss Pliura