This Weeks Highlights

1-1's Weekly Highlights!

Curriculum Night

It was nice to see all of you last night at Curriculum Night, thank you for coming out! I hope you enjoyed hearing about all the wonderful adventures that we are going to have this year! The children were very excited to read the notes you had left on their desks. If you missed the presentation I have posted a link on the right side of our web site titled, Curriculum Night Presentation.

Reading

This week, the children were introduced to Reader’s Workshop. The children were excited to learn that together we are going to become a reading community.

We discussed What Good Readers Do. As we read the book, Library Mouse: A world to Explore, we created an anchor chart to help us remember the important things that good readers do. 

What Good Readers Do

-Listen carefully

-Learn new words and information

-Link what we read to our own lives

-Share ideas and feelings

The children also learned about the important parts of a book. They learned that all books are organized in a special way so that readers are familiar with their structure and know where to look for certain information. The children worked together to identify and locate the different parts of a book.

At the end of this week, the children were introduced to their responsibilities and expectations to follow during reading workshop. We will continue to work on these responsibilities and expectations during our launch unit. 

The children also learned about stamina today. They learned that stamina is doing anything for a long amount of time without getting tired or giving up. Today we worked on building our reading stamina. The children practiced reading and training their bodies and brains to read in the appropriate way (staying in one spot, read the whole time, read quietly, work on stamina, get started right away). They did a great job! Each day we will work on increasing our stamina and building the length of time we read for. Enjoy the photos below of our class hard at work on building their reading stamina. 

I am continuing to assess the children using Fountas and Pinnell running records. I will continue working on these assessments until I have had time to read with each child.

Writing

This week, we started our first writing unit, Autobiographies. The children learned that an autobiography is a writing about the author. They each have started their own mini autobiography. The children chose to write about something important to them their family.  

The children also learned about the writing process that authors go through. We will practice and use this process throughout the whole year. The children will: Think, Draw, Label, and Write. 

Patriot Day

Today, we celebrated Patriot day in our classroom. We read the story, America Is... After, we had a discussion on what America means to each of us. The children, created heart shaped flags and on the back they finished the sentence starter, America is... Some of the finished sentences were: America is a safe place to live. America is freedom. America is beautiful. America is my home. America is my family. America is a wonderful place to live. America is a place for all of us. 

Have a great weekend!