Informational Reports, Math and Independent Work

We have been working on our 2D and 3D shapes.  Shapes are everywhere!!  Our Kindergarten students can analyze, describe and compare 2D shapes and 3D shapes.  They can explain if a 3D shape has flat faces or curved surfaces.  They can describe how many sides/corners 2D shapes have!  Did you know you can use rectangles to make a square?  Or that you can use triangles to make a diamond?  Or squares to make a rectangle?  The Kindergarteners do!!  Check out the awesome art work they created showing that shapes are everywhere!  They can also segment the word:Everywhere....every and where... 

Happy Leaners!

We have been gearing up for Monday, February 4^th which is our 100^th day of school!  It has been an incredible first 100 days of school.  These students are truly the best students any teacher could ever wish for!  We have been preparing with some fun writing prompts.  Students finished the sentences “When I am 100 years old, I will ……” and “If I had 100 dollars, I would buy….”.  I’m sure you could imagine, the responses were fantastic!  The students would buy a batman cave, toy aliens, real aliens, puppies, cereal, a member to animal jam, etc!  The students said that when they are 100 years old, they will be an old lady, a Grandpa, be bald, have fake teeth, that I won’t know anything, that I will retire from being a rocket scientist, that I will be able to take my teeth in and out of my mouth.” 

The last couple weeks we have been learning and getting smart on the topic of Information Reports.  Students have learned that in order to write a good report, we must first read and get smart on the topic.  Students also learned that a topic can be lots of different things.  Once we read up on our topic, we can then begin to write.  To write a good report we must include: a picture, title, topic sentence and facts to support the topic sentence and title.  After much discussion and learning about Information Reports, we took our first try at writing an Informational Report.  The students all wrote a report on the same topic.  The topic was Fairy Penguins.  Students did an excellent job working through the long writing process.  Some of my speedy writers even got to type their report on the computer! 

The above video is one of the ENDLESS reasons I LOVE teaching these kids!  I am ALWAYS laughing!!!

Speed writers get their first chance at typing their Informational Report!

We have added some “independent work” to our Math centers.  I was so excited to see students picking out their own written assignments to complete before they would move onto to the next station.  They did a fantastic job working independently!  They always do an excellent job working with a partner in math centers; I should have guessed that the transition to independent work would be seamless!    

The students never cease to amaze me!  We have only been working on addition and subtraction word problems for a week, and the students are already becoming pros at it!  (The video below shows a student working on an addition word problem.  There was a technical difficulty at the end, however, she was showing her work correctly (even though using your fingers to solve is a-okay too!) and got the problem right as soon as I fixed the SMART board!