We have had a good time this past week using apples in our learning!
We created apple prints, and made applesauce!  They really enjoyed the applesauce!

Here they are tasting all their efforts!!  Yummy!!

Math Rotations

Each day we start with Math Rotations.  Students are in learning groups and these groups rotate to 4 different stations.  See them below:

 This is the Journal station and after they finish they are able to get a math manipulative tub to practice one of the concepts we have been learning about.

 Here they are at the teacher station, here they do a variety of learning activities centered around their math development.  They also visit the Teacher Assistant station who has activities related to the new concept we are covering in our whole group math lessons.

They also have a ST Math Station, this is a spatial math program where students progress from one lesson to the next.  They will have goals that we will check each Friday!

As a part of our project that we are working on we had a counselor guest speaker Ms. Carter, she read a book to us and talked about the power of positive self talk.  We followed that by reading another story and looking into the mirror again to see what the students could say positive about themselves.

Our Marble Jar

You may have heard about our Marble Jar.  This jar is used to encourage positive behavior, for every 20 marbles they earn they get a surprise!  So far they have earned:  mini-cupcakes, a free book, extra time outside,  and a special Friday!  I wonder what will be next?

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During Reader's Workshop

We are still establishing reader's workshop time.  Here we are trying to read without stopping, our longest time so far was 11 minutes.  We are hoping to get to 15 minutes this week!  Our friends wearing the super reader cape have shown the most improvement in staying on task to increase their reading stamina.  

 

 

Finally a Full Week!!

We did it!  We finished the 1st 11 days of school!!

I will start with our most exciting part of the week!  Friday we launched our PBL Unit, Mirror Mirror on the wall!  The kindergarten and Pre-K teachers dressed as dwarfs and Snow White came to visit and tell her story, she sang with us and she told us how important it is to see the special part of ourselves.

 When we returned to our room we looked into our own classroom mirror to see what we like about ourselves.

 We recorded what we saw, and next week we will be trying to answer this question...

How can we encourage positive self-esteem in our community? We will be working on this for several weeks.

In Reading this week... we read books that are songs too! Kids loved this!!

 We discussed what illustrations are .. 

We discussed who illustrators are..

And

We discussed how we can become good illustrators...

 WE created our own paper illustrations like the illustrator of Chicka, Chicka, Boom Boom!

 Everyday we have a new student of the day.  This person leads our line and we dissect their name, they also help with our morning message.

 In Math this week we continued to look into sorting.. next week we will move into patterning. We didn't get to our apple activities so we will start them on Monday :)

Two Day Week

We only had two days together last week...
Can't wait to get back!

Last week we started to look into our letters G R E A T for citizenship.  We read the book "The Dot"  and then we use our Growth Mindset to paint just like the main character!  G is for growth - do our learning goals show growth, do our choices show growth, does our mindset show growth (not: I can't do it! but: I can't do it yet!)

 R is for Respect... we read another book about Respect and talked about how we can respect one another and our differences, we also talked about how to respect our classroom and school.
Here is the rest of the GREAT document so you can see how we are going to be GREAT Citizens in Isle of Wight!!

Our First Week of School

We are off to a GREAT start!

 Thank you for sharing your kiddos with me :)

 We Learned About...

 WE STARTED READERS WORKSHOP this WEEK!!!

We even logged how many STEPS we read.  1 step is 15 minutes...

 

We read lots of PETE the CAT books and loved it!  We took a tour of the school and by the end of the week we made our own PETE the cat!

 WE Learned how to be a Good Listener...

We worked in small groups too...

 

We Learned that Words do Matter...

We read "David at School" and decided what to do and what NOT to do at school.

Then we created David...

 

 We played...

We worked on our own...

We used IPADS....

We talked, sang, and danced at the carpet..

 WE practiced Fire Drills, Lockdown Drills, Tornado Drills, and Earthquake Drills...

Here we are during our Earthquake Drill..