Kinder-Whale Tales Dear Kinder-Whale Families, I hope you are having a wonderful weekend so far! Featured above are the amazing, lovely, and creative projects that all of the Kinder-Whales and family members created to celebrate the 100th day of school! You all did such an incredible job, and the students were so excited to present their projects. Thank you for all of your hard work and creativity! After each student presented their 100th day project, we placed the projects on our desks, and then the students did a gallery walk, where they walked around the classroom and admired each others' projects. It was also a wonderful opportunity for the students to ask each other questions, to practice counting the items on the projects, and to praise one another for their creativity! Letter of the Week: Qq Our letter of the week was Qq! We reviewed how to correctly form the letter Qq, using curved lines and straight lines. The students practiced writing the letter Qq as neatly as possible, using the solid and dotted lines to help them. Then, the Kinder-Whales had collaborative conversations to come up with as many words as they could think of that begin with the letter Qq, including queen, quail, quiet, quite, quick, quack, question, etc. Many of the students also heard the /qu/ sound in the middle of words, such as square, earthquake, squeeze, and squishy. The students practiced reading, writing, sounding out, and coming up with letter Qq words during our letter of the week centers, pictured below. The Mitten by Jan Brett Because we are in between SEAL units, our current theme is on winter/mittens. Last week, the students were introduced to a book titled, The Mitten, by Jan Brett. It is one of my favorite stories to read aloud because there are so many language functions that we are able to practice. Throughout the week, we read The Mitten multiple times, each time reading it with a different focus. The first time we read it aloud, the students enjoyed the surprises that come with reading a new story. The second time we read it aloud, the students were introduced to new vocabulary and were challenged to try and see if there is anything new that they didn't notice during the first read aloud. The third read aloud focused on story elements, such as who the characters are, where the story takes place (setting), and what were the problem and solution in the story. The fourth read aloud focused on sequence of events as well as retelling the story, summarizing what happens in the beginning, middle, and end of the story. The students loved reading the story, even though we had read it multiple times. By the last time we read it aloud, the students chimed in and read parts of the story with me. It is amazing to see how much the students can recall in great detail after being exposed to the text numerous times throughout the week! I encourage you to read and re-read books at home, especially our take home book bags, to help students realize that each time they re-read, it allows them to dig deeper into understanding the story. We also had the students act out the story, with different students taking turns to play each of the animals in the story. Pictured below are our mittens centers as well as pictures of the students reenacting the story. At one of the stations, the students colored pictures of the characters and used yarn to string their own mitten. Next, the students used the mitten and the characters to retell the story with a friend sitting at their table. The students will be taking home their mittens projects next week, and I encourage you to ask them to retell the story to you, using their projects as props! Mitten Booklets: Tiny Mitten Book & Sight Word: Was A HUGE THANK YOU GOES OUT TO NORAH AND THE BONIFACIO FAMILY for volunteering and taking the time to cut out and prep the little mitten booklets pictured below. The students read aloud their little mitten books to themselves, sounding out unknown words and making notes of it. Then they colored the pictures and read the mitten booklet aloud with a partner. Our other mitten book was a summary of Jan Brett's book, The Mitten, with a focus on an upcoming sight word: was. Please scroll down to see the students practice reading the books aloud! The students were asked as they read aloud, to make sure to track each word. It was also a great way to review, retell, and summarize our book of the week. I am so proud of all of the progress that each of the Kinder-Whales have been making in our class! They are doing such a magnificent job! Where Are My Mittens? Another one of our mittens centers was to complete this mitten-shaped booklet below, that focused on position words. The students cut out pictures of mittens and glued them into the book in the appropriate places. Once the students were done cutting, gluing, and coloring, the students practiced reading aloud the book to as many other students as possible, making sure to track each word using their finger as they read aloud or listen to their partners read aloud. Please scroll down to see a video of one of our students reading aloud the book. Math: Move Over, Move Over! In math, the students are continuing to work on numbers up to 10, as well as numbers up to 20. We are also learning and reviewing rhyming words, using the poems and readings in our math curriculum. Please scroll down to see a video of the students acting out the poem below. This helped to create a visual for the students, and it also allowed the students to make that one-to-one correspondence connection with numbers. P.S. in the video, the last little one said, GOOD NIGHT! :) Math: Counting Using Ten Frames! This week, the students reviewed our teen numbers (13-19) and numbers greater than 10 (11-20). The students reviewed how to use a ten frame when making numbers greater than 10. When we look at a ten frame and see that all of the boxes are filled up, then we can start by counting at 10 (instead of at 1) and continue on to make our number. For instance, to make the number 13, the students would need two ten frames. They can quickly fill up the first ten frame, knowing that it will add up to 10. Next, they can count on from 10 and fill in the second circle with 11, 12, 13. First, the students practiced counting ten frames that were already drawn for them. Later on in the week, the students did the opposite: The students were given the numbers and had to draw in the correct number of circles in the ten frame to form the number. Please scroll down to see a video of a student practicing counting using ten frames! Math: Ten Frames & One-to-One Correspondence To close out the week, the Kinder-Whales completed pages in their math workbooks that reviewed counting using one-to-one correspondence and using ten frames. Next week, we will wrap up Chapter 6 Numbers from 0-20, and we will begin Chapter 7 on Solid and Flat Shapes. | Reminders & Updates Next Week:
THANK YOU!
February At a Glance:
RECAP: SEAL Socio-Emotional Component The students were very excited when I asked them to make different kinds of faces to showcase various feelings, much like the characters from the movie, Inside Out. Their pictures were used to create FEELINGS POSTERS, which are currently displayed in our classroom. Beginning next week, we will use the sentence frames depicted in the pictures below. Students will ask each other how they are feeling and respond with one of the feelings words below as well as explain why, using the word because. Please scroll down to see some of their practice interactions, where the students took turns sharing how they are feeling and why! Our goal is to have these interactions every morning when students come in as well as every afternoon before students leave to go home. I encourage you to use the new socio-emotional vocabulary words at home as well! Feelings & Emotions Continued! Another one of our winter stations was to create a book about a snowball with feelings. The students matched each snowball face to the emotions word and glued them down to create their book. Then the students practiced reading aloud the book to themselves, before practicing reading it aloud to other students. The Kinder-Whales were encouraged to make faces as they read the book aloud. Please scroll down to see some students practicing reading Snowball Faces! 100th Day Centenarians The Kinder-Whales did a wonderful job on their 100 year old projects, where they created themselves and wrote about what they will do when they are 100 years old. Their adorable centenarians are now on display in the hallway! Star Wars Sing Along? During the 100 collections project Gallery Walk, the students started to sing one of the popular songs from the movie, Star Wars. Check out the video below! I am so happy to have been able to capture this moment!!! 100 Collections Presentations: This past week, the Kinder-Whales also presented their 100 collections project. They did a fantastic job of introducing themselves and explaining what they used to create their 100 collections masterpieces. Check out one of the presentations below! Calendar Continued! Can you believe that it is already almost FEBRUARY?! The students are becoming calendar experts and have done a great job of taking turns to lead the class in the daily calendar routines. They have learned how to write the digital date (writing the date using only numbers), as well as identifying what each number stands for (1 for the month of January, 28 for the number of days we have been in January, and 2016 for the year that we are in). The Kinder-Whales have also done a great job of taking turns as weather forecasters and reporting on the weather, by looking at what the sky looks like and feeling how the air feels like. We graphed the weather and saw that we mostly had cloudy and rainy weather days, with some sunny days in the month of January. Everything that they are doing during calendar is setting them up for both the math concepts to come as well as our upcoming SEAL unit on weather! Stay tuned for more information! Also, now that we have been in school for more than 100 days (104 days to be exact), we will begin counting beyond 100, using a different hundreds chart, which will be introduced in students' February calendar. Please continue to work with your students to count forwards and backwards up to 100, which will help them when we learn the strategies of counting on to add and counting backwards to subtract! No Starfish Next Week: Because this past week was a short week and next week will be a week where I will be out for multiple days, we will not have a Starfish of the Week until the week of February 8th. Brody, our last starfish of the week, will choose a name/number next week! Thank You Thank you for taking the time to read through the mid-week reminders as well as the weekly news! I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to look at all of the wonderful things that the students are doing in our classroom! February will be a short and hectic month--before we know it, it will be March! I will do my best to capture all of the precious moments and learning experiences that occur in Room 8! As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. & please remember to leave a quick comment to indicate that you have read and received the weekly news updates, reminders, and information! Perhaps you can leave a quick comment with how your child is feeling today using our new socio-emotional vocabulary words, as pictured above! Thank you again! Enjoy the rest of your weekend! Best wishes, Mrs. Lorenzana |
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Martin Luther King, JR. portraitsWhen I'm 100 years old...
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Mrs. LorenzanaKindergarten Teacher at Spangler Elementary Archives
June 2016
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