MAP testing done, done and done! :)

                                                       How much did you like the book???

 Last week as you know a majority of our week was spent MAP testing.  We had a special reading party with the book, “The Polar Express”.  The students were allowed to wear their pajamas, they needed a fun outlet during all that testing!  I also thought on Thursday after we finished our final MAP test, the kids were very deserving of a ONE SONG DANCE PARTY! 

Check out these kids, they are the best! The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree! Hehe...I have to extend a gracious THANK YOU to the parents who volunteered to help with our crafts!

 

 We were able to get all of our crafts done in one hour thanks to the help of the parents stepping up to the challenge of running their own craft center!  The students loved it and are sooo excited to give their gifts to their families! 

 This week in school, we have been working really hard on using descriptive words to make sentences better.  When describing different things we can use our senses to helps us come up with words.  What does the thing look like, taste like, smell like, sound like, feel like, what does it make you feel like?   Instead of students writing in their journal, “I like cake.”  We are working on writing “I like chocolate, pink, round, yummy cake!”  That sentence is a little extreme, but we are trying to add at least one descriptive word to each sentence. 

We are still working away in Guided Reading groups.  Working on “I wonder…” statements, as well as, “This makes me think of…..a time in my life when….or another book…or a movie….or anything that it reminds the students of.”  Getting the students to think about what they are reading is huge.  Any text to life connection they can make is fantastic!  We have also been focusing on IDENTIFYING and DESCRIBING characters, setting and major events of a text.  I always ask the students to give me their answers in complete sentences!  Complete sentences are my favorite! 

Math centers are still going strong too.  I am so excited for the break, I plan to revamp some of our Math centers.  Our math scores on MAP testing were outstanding, so there is some “proof in the pudding” that our guided math system is working!  However, I am so excited to take students to the next level with their math skills second half of the year.  Some of the students have began analyzing numbers.  Looking at number 24 for example, and being able to tell me that there are 2 groups of 10 that really equal 20, and 4 ones that equal four.  We are just introducing this concept.  The students have been “racing” Mrs. Kressin to see who can sort out a specific number of building cubes (say 38) into the correct groups of tens and ones.  Some students are not ready for place value yet, and we are working on gaining that solid foundation of addition. 

We reviewed greater than, less than and equal to this week, but took it up a notch.  Now instead of just saying it, the students are now writing their own numbers and symbols.  For example, the student were given two numbers and they needed to correctly label it with the >,<,= symbol.  Students would have to fill in the blank and then “read” what it said.  Students would write something like 5>2, and then read to the class, 5 is greater than 2.   After the students have sorted all the problems in the room.  We read through them in the class and make sure they were sorted correctly.  Students got so good at this, that the second time we practiced they got them all correct!   There were over 30 different problems they had to correctly label and sort!  Awesome!!

We started some of our Holiday celebration today and I got some great pictures!!!  I am going to wait to post all of the holiday pictures and videos together though.  I hope we have school tomorrow! 

Keep reading on www.raz-kids.com !!!!  Click on the link, then go to student login.  Then for Teacher Name it is: ovkressin, click on my name.  Then click on your students name and read away!!! :)

Awesome Math and Science Website!

Hello Families,

A teacher's (and mother's) mind rarely turns off that is why I am up so early typing this blog! :)  This week since we are having MAP testing, I wanted to take the opportunity to teach science for a portion of our week.  We have started talking about the Solar System and why we have day and night.  Brainpop jr is a great website that I use frequently in class, however you have to pay for it.  I wanted to recommend a website for your student and older siblings that I love.

http://studyjams.scholastic.com/studyjams/index.htm 

It is a website dedicated to MATH and SCIENCE.  They have great videos, slide shows and quizzes you can take to test you knowledge for each concept.  I thought it may be a little over the Kindergarteners heads, but I decided to show them the slide show of the planets and I did my own commentary for each picture and the students were AMAZED!!!  I'm so glad I didn't listen to my first instinct and not show them.  The students are really picking up the knowledge of our solar system.  A student brought in a book that we read for our read aloud that had fantastic illustrations!  Each student then got to "be" a planet, and we practiced orbited the sun and keeping the correct distance between planets.  However, my room, was not working out so well for us, (we need more room!), so next week we will head down to the gym to get a better understanding of it. 

Below you will see the introductory lesson to the solar system.  We focused on the Earth and the Sun.  Students were not understanding what "orbit" meant.  We practiced some movements to help us make a connection.  After I turned the video off, the Earth needed to sit down, they were dizzy!  haha!

Hope you like the website!

Mrs. Kressin

Read with expression!!

We are still rocking through our Math Centers. It is such a rewarding time for me as a teacher. I get (most days) to spend one on one time with each student and focus on their own particular needs. The students love Math centers too. I always get asked in the morning, "We are doing Math centers today right?" The only day we usually don't have time to go through our centers is Friday. Friday is a busy day. We have Library and our FUN FRIDAY ACTIVITY! It's important the students get that recess time on Friday. I get to see how creative they are on the playground. Someone is always a King and they must protect the Queen. It is so fun watching and listening to their imaginations! 

You will see the video below of students spinning a wheel, and then whatever number they land on they pull that many circles into the box.  This is great for number recognition.  Especially with the numbers above 10.  Students can easily confuse 21 with 12 and other numbers.  They have great number sense, if they were to count out 21 objects they would do it correctly, but to recognize the different numbers in writing is difficult.  Another big question I get during Math centers, “How do I write 35?” or 68?” (most numbers beyond 20..we are working on listening to the numbers as we say them and sounding them out just like we do with writer's workshop!) 

 

 

This picture shows a festive work problem that the student must complete the puzzle. The numbers 1-25 must be placed in the correct order.  When the puzzle is completed it is in the shape of a tree. 

 

  

I have introduced “fact families” to some of the students during math centers.  We have also started looking at numbers and their place value.

 

Each day though all the students are still working on addition, writing numbers, counting 1-100,  comparing numbers of greater than, less than or equal to. Etc.  We want to keep the knowledge we have learned fresh and apply it in different ways. 

This week we used some of our Writer’s Workshop time to create our own Holiday book.  We then used that book for some of our guided reading groups this week.  We have been working very hard on this story and the students are very excited to take home the book next week to read it to their families.  Our focus this week was reading fluently and with expression!  So make sure next week, if your student is reading it boring, that you tell them you are falling asleep!  They need to read it with excitement!  J  They also have been using pictures to help them solve the tricky words.  

                                 Partner reading...with expression!

 

Next week we will have a long week of Map Testing.  We will test most days next week first thing in the morning.  In the afternoon on Wednesday and Friday, I want to take some time to have the students make ornaments.  If any of you would like to come in and help or just join in on the fun you are welcome to come!  Just let me know so I can let the front office know.   

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend with your family!  Keep reading and counting! 

Sincerely,

Mrs. Kressin

 

P.S.  I had a parent asking for suggestions for websites. 

 

of course I love  www.starfall.com -great phonics practice, sounding out words in the "Learn To Read" section.  For most of the Kindergarteners now, I make them go to the "Learn to Read" section of startfall. 

www.raz-kids.com  (raz kids, will continue to progress in difficulty, once your child completes all the books on their page, they get bumped up to the next reading level!  This is a great site, you will have endless access to books here! Just remember they have to get three green checkmarks before I want them to move onto a new book! 

 

www.ixl.com - you have to pay $10/month for unlimited access, however it give you a certain number of problems you can practice each day, which is really all you should do anyways.  Remember we don't want your little learners to get burnt out either.  It is equally important that they enjoy learning!!! 

 

http://www.funbrain.com/ - you will have to say that your student is at a first grade level because they don't have Kindergarten on there, however, there are still some really useful and fun education games that they would enjoy. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2D & 3D Shapes

Hello families and friends, long time no blog! J  We have had some crazy short weeks in November.  Nevertheless, the students have been working hard at reaching 2^nd quarter benchmarks and some of the 3^rd quarter benchmarks. 

 

Writers Workshop is still going great.  Students continue to grow as writers.  We have started “publishing” our work.  Every Friday, a few students are chose to share one journal entry of their choice.  Other students share their positive feedback with each student that presents their work.  Students comments for other students are something like, “I like how he/she used lots of detail in their picture.” “I like how her message matches her picture.”  “I like how his colors are like they are in real life.”  (I had an awesome video, but I have been waiting for it to upload for over an hour now..so I will have to persevere without it, but it’s a really great moment for students to get praised by their peers for their work. And the students’ feedback is always right on!)

Guided Reading is really off and running.  The students reading ability is improving each week.  Students are using pictures to help them solve tricky words and using different strategies to help sound out difficult words.  We have started including .. “I wonder…” statements to the end of most guided reading sessions.  This is  a statement each students shares of something that they wondered or thought about while they were reading the book.  This helps students take their comprehension to a deeper level.   They are not just reading words, but thinking about what they are reading. 

Students have also been working on their sight words.  Mrs. Kressin has even promised a pizza (and cookie) party once the whole class can identify 25 sight words.  Below is a video of students working on a word family scavenger hunt. 

Students have been rocking their knowledge of 2D and 3D shapes.  Students have been identifying 2D shapes: rectangle, circle, oval, diamond, triangle, and oval.  They can explain each shape by describing the number of sides and corners.  They can identify shapes as flat or solid, and build each shape by drawing or using popsicle sticks.  3D shapes are required at this point, but the students have learned the 3D shapes also.   The 3D shapes we have been working on are: sphere (very hard for most Kindergarteners to say, a lot of time it comes out Spear, but that’s ok, they have the idea), cylinder, cube, cone, pyramid, and rectangular prism.  Students have been working on interactive smart board activities to locate 3D shapes in pictures.  The students did a better job finding them than I did!  I could never find the last 3D shape in each picture, but one of the students always did.  The students can identify most 3D shapes, and describe whether they have flat faces or curved surfaces.   

 

 

 

Math we are still spending a lot of time in Math centers.  Students have been mastering their number recognition and writing numbers 1-20.   In the centers, students are working on shapes, greater than-less than-equal to review, addition, subtraction, smartboard activity which almost always included sorting, number correspondence, addition and if they get far enough into activity subtraction. 

I am so excited to say that every student has mastered describing the position of objects using terms such as above, below, in front of, next to and behind.  This may sound easy, however some students had never even heard the word “above” before!  We made  a fun game out of it, and the students mastered the skill very quickly. 

These students are the best!  As always, I truly believe I have the greatest students ever.  Last Friday before we left for the day, each student had to make sure they had given their friend a hug before they left.  This is such a special, caring, community of learners.  They make every day so fun. 
Next week we have MAP testing again, so as always, please make sure everyone gets a good night’s sleep and has a big breakfast in the morning! J

Keep up all the great work at home!  Parental involvement makes such a difference in each student’s success!  I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with their families. 

Have a great week!
Mrs. Kressin
 

What do you use to mend a jack-o-lantern? A PUMPKIN PATCH!

This week we continued to work on reading fluently, echo-reading and paying attention to punctuation.  We added a little flavor to our morning calendar time, by doing different "voices" during this time.  Most of the week, we did calendar in a "sPoOKy" voice, but thursday and friday we switched to volcANO!

 

This week we also started doing addition and subtraction during the same lesson.  What I mean by that is, we would do one addition problem and the next problem would be subtraction, the students were doing amazing.  Whatever sum we got from the addition problem would then become the whole number in our subtraction sentence.  (It also helped that when we “took part  away” or subtracted, they got to eat however many fruit loops we were taking away. Subtraction is their favorite now.) 

And the moment we were all waiting for: THE HALLOWEEN PARTY!!!

Here were the learning targets on Halloween. 

 

 

Each student got to pick out their own small pumpkin that they were going to be doing experiments on.  Students cycled through difference stations to test: how big around their pumpkin was, how much did their pumpkin weigh, will a pumpkin sink or float, what does a pumpkin look like inside, smell like, sounds like, how many seed are in a pumpkin, and how many cubes tall is your pumpkin.  Thanks to our awesome parents (and sister) volunteers, it went SMASHING!  At each station, the student would make a prediction, test their prediction and record their results.  

 

 

 

 

After all the fun of Halloween had settled, we did spend some time learning about what it means to vote and learning about the President of the United States.  We rocked the vote on Friday, by voting for the line leader for next week.   The vote was won by one vote, showing that EVERY vote does count!

 Have a wonderful long weekend and remember to vote on Tuesday!  

Meet Venn Diagram...How to read fluently...and so much more!

This week was RED RIBBON WEEK.  We had short lessons each day reviewing how to be healthy and happy and how to say No! to anything that may harm our body!  Each student pledged to live a happy, healthy life!

This week we met some friends that help us organize what we read.  We first met VENN DIAGRAM.  Venn Diagram helps us to organize the differences and similarities of two things (i.e. between a tadpole and an adult frog).  The picture is of the students’ responses, I did not add a single response!  Students know that we put differences on the outside and similarities on the inside.  We use movements with our hands to help us remember.

We also introduced a T chart and how that can help us organize information and compare.

Writer’s Workshop, students are working away.  I am so proud of the students.  They really have the knowledge now and a very solid foundation of writing sentences.  They know that each sentence starts with a capital letter, they we write from left to right, that we create space between words, include the “who” and the “what”, and always ends in a period or exclamation point.  We will continue practicing each day on improving, but the knowledge is there, it’s just putting it to practice. 

We did a really fun lesson this week on reading fluently.  Part of reading fluently is knowing what to do when you get to punctuation.  This week we focused on what readers do when they see a period and an exclamation point.  We did a sentence walk around the room.   Taped to the floor were the sentences:  “I see a dog.  The dog ran home.  I love dogs!”  We practiced walking fluently (smoothly and natural, just like reading should be!) and as we read the sentences when we came to a period, we put or hands up (like we were saying HALT with our hands) and paused.  When we read the sentence “I love dogs!” we would say it with super duper excitement and when we got to the exclamation point we would jump with our hands up in the air. 

In Math we have still been working on our addition skills and just started to introduce subtraction.  I took two videos of the students doing Math.  They are picking it up so quickly.  There is a couple short math s I like to show in the morning.  I try to always be ready for the students even before the school day so they don’t have to sit in the hallway.  If they are in the building, I would rather have them in the classroom watching a fun video or doing a quick phonics or math game.  I will attach both videos.  The videos are working though.  Before I started teaching the subtraction lesson, I asked the students if they knew what subtraction meant and most of them said, “It means to take away.” So I asked, “How did you know that?”  They said, “From the video.” and pointed to the SMART board.  Cool!

We also had a fun activity to work on mastering the common core standard: “describes positions of objects using terms such as above, below, beside, in front of, next to, and behind.   We played a Simon says kind of game ad used “friends” (paper plates with faces drawn on them) to help us learn where above, below, in front of, etc…..we rotated the paper plate around our body to show the correct position.  It was really fun, students request to play that game now.  J  Needless to say, they met the standard quickly!

I am so excited for next week.  Our Halloween Party is going to be awesome.  We are going to have centers that focus on Math and Science.  It will be great to have so many parents in the classroom that day as well.  It makes it an extra special day for your son or daughter.  J

Have a great weekend!  I’m off to run a 5K, perfect way to end Red Ribbon Week.  

Mrs. Kressin

Here's the other Math video we use in the morning (suggested by one of my fellow Kindergarten teachers!  Her class loves it, so we had to try it!):

Why are frogs so happy? They eat whatever BUGS them!

 

Days of grueling work up to the party....

 Just like our normal day to day learning environment, we had centers and centers of froggerrific activities!

 

First things first, we have to make our party hat!

 

Now let's glue the different stages of a frog's life in the correct sequence on the head band.

 

Student's depiction of a frog's life cycle. 

 

 

Since we were working on our 5 senses this week, we had a SENSORY STATION.  At this station students bravely reached their hand under a covered container to use their sense of touch to tally what stage of the frog life cycle they thought they felt.  Students put a tally mark for what stage they thought they felt.  Students described what they felt...(was it hot? cold? hard? soft? slimy? rough? etc..)

Tadpoles in water!

Frog eggs in water!

Adult frog on land!

Students tally up votes before the unveiling!

Now we can SEE the stage!  Using another sense!

Students trying to SEE what they FELT!

Students described the tadpole station as...."slimy, cold, slippery and tadpoley!" 

 

 

 

Students working on LILY PAD addition!

 

 

 

"Can you please place my life stages in the correct sequence of events?"

 Student's also got to have a dance party to end the day, dancing to the awesome frog song of course!
 

5 Senses, building addition number sentences!

Phonics Center: Students master letter identification.  They align lower case letters with the corresponding capital letters.  Once we are done with that!  On to letter sounds!  Let me tell you, these girls are letter ROCK STARS!!!

Last week was business as usual…as far as the students doing an OUTSTANDING job! 

In Writer’s Workshop we are stilling working on the long list of things to remember when writing. 

1.       Always write from left to right.

2.       Use a capital letter to start each sentence.

3.       Leave space between words.

4.       Including the “who” and the “what” in each sentence.

5.       Ending each sentence with a period or exclamation point. 

There are SOO many things to remember which is why we practice each day! 

In reading, the students mastered the sequence of events of the different stages of a frog’s life cycle.  While reading the non-fiction book “The Life Cycle of a Frog”, we also looked at: The Table of Contents page, glossary, sidebars, bold faced words and other features that help us better understand any non-fiction book we are reading.  (They worked so hard, they were rewarded with an all day FROG party!  Next blog will showcase those photos and videos!)

In Science we worked on our 5 senses and which body part is associated with it!   We analyzed fruit loops with each one of our senses and then described what we saw, heard, felt, tasted or touched.  We also did an interactive SMART board activity where students had to decide which sense would be used to do something? And what body part would be used for that sense.  (i.e. “our nose would help use the sense of smell to smell stinky basketball socks!”) Students also helped to rebuild a stick figure that had lost all of her body parts that are associated with a sense.  They took turns to give her ears, nose, hands, eyes and mouth.   

Guided Phonics Center with Mrs. K

"I can build the word....(lap and cap...and many others)" center.  Students build words with gentle coaching from Mrs. Kressin.  After they build their word, they practice writing that word as well.  Sometime we speed build...where Mrs. Kressin gives a word, and the students race to build the word as fast as they can!  :)    

9 ways to make (equal) 8!  8 ways to make (equal) 7!  Students are building the addition number sentence, then writing the addition number sentence.  These boys are getting to be pro's! 

Students are making sense of number addition sentences!