I thought I'd give you a mid-week update on some happenings in our classroom :)
Following Classroom Rules
In our classroom, we have 5 rules:
1. Respect yourself, others, and the class
2. Use your manners
3. Listening ears
4. Raise your hand to speak
5. Clean up after yourself
Miss Smith and I notice when students are following the rules, and also when they are not. Today, I was very upset to see this at one of our table activities.
As you can see, the bin was coloured on and the label was scratched. We aren't sure who did this, but we know it was this morning at the creative table during table activities. No one admitted to doing it and we still don't know. I sat down with students and explained to them how sad this made me. We talked about how these are things I make for them to use and pay for with my own money, and it really hurts my feelings to see one of our students treating our materials like this. I really hope we don't see this happen again.
All Aboard the Friend Ship!
Today we launched our "Friend Ship" theme; a tool we will use in our classroom to teach good character amongst students. We had a lot of fun introducing students to the Friend Ship. We learned that Mr. Giggles, our class mascot, was the captain of the ship, and he's going to teach us all about what being a great friend looks like. We invited all students to come on board the Friend Ship, and of course everyone was thrilled! To make them official pirates on the ship, we gave each student an eye patch. This eye patch represents their willingness to try and be the best friend they can be, with help from Mr. Giggles, Miss Smith, and myself :)
We have 5 rules on the Friend Ship (these are different from our class rules). In order to be a good friend, we must:
1. Use kind words
2. Share with our friends
3. Help our friends
4. Listen to our friends
5. Be happy for our friends
Over the next couple of months, we will be having lessons that specifically teach to these rules. What does it look and sound like to use kind words? To share? We are excited to use this theme to help teach some of these concepts :) We hope everyone is on board with learning to be a good friend, and no one is left stranded on the island!
I don't think the eye patches were very comfortable, and this may be my favourite picture yet ;)
Literacy Update
We have finished learning about Mr. H and his 4 friends! But that doesn't mean we can forget about them! This week, we've learned about /wh/ and /th/.
/wh/: Miss W and Mr. H enjoy spending time with each other, but when they’re together, Mr. H finds that Miss W does all the talking- he can’t even get a word in! Therefore you only hear the sound she makes - /w/. The only exception to this rule is the word ‘who’ where you hear Mr. H instead.
/th/ Th: Miss T and Mr. H love spending time together, but they often don’t agree on things, so they tend to get in a lot of fights. Therefore, they stick their tongues out and make the /th/ sound. With /th/, there is what we call a voiced and unvoiced /th/. A voiced /th/ uses your voice like in the words ‘that’ and ‘there’. An unvoiced /th/ just uses your breath like in the words ‘theatre’ and ‘think’.
Printing Practice
Believe it or not, teaching kids the formation of letters isn't an expectation in the Kindergarten curriculum. It does come about during the day when students are writing, but we don't necessarily sit them down and teach them how to make the letters. I would like to offer some support for you to work on printing with your child at home. If you would like a copy of a printing practice book, please send me a note. It's just rote practice of printing the letters. If you help your child with this at home, then I can spend more of my time teaching them how to use these letters to compose words instead of actually printing them. Like I said, it does come about naturally through writing, but extra practice never hurts :) Please always encourage your child to write their letters from the top down- never starting at the bottom.
That's all for now! Have a nice night :)
~ Miss Pliura
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