Pay It Forward!

We had two more authors this week publish their books by reading them to the class!

We have been working on mastering the reading strategy of "SUMMARIZING".  Summarizing can be very difficult for adults, so breaking it down for students to understand can be a complex concept.  Many times, students want to tell you every last detail they remember.  It is great when they can recall information, however, we have been working hard at recognizing the difference between supporting details of the text and   summarizing the text.  We try to focus on what the text was MOSTLY ABOUT!  Not just a detail.  We need to see the forest and not just one tree.  

 Students are holding links in the chain that describe how they helped to "pay it forward" last week. 

Look how many good deeds we accomplished as a class in just one week!!

Student working on meeting common core standard K.OA.4. "Finds the number that makes ten when added to a given number and records the answer.."

Since it was too cold to go outside for our FUN FRIDAY ACTIVITY, I taught the student's.....wait for it....the MACARENA!!  They thought it was hilarious!! :)

100 DAYS SMARTER!!!

Today was the 100^th DAY OF SCHOOL! 

We had a fantastic day.  First things first, what kind of a party would it be without a 100^th day party hat?!   The students did a great job making their hats. 

Mrs. Kressin's parents came to visit for the special day!

Thanks to the help of Mrs. Kressin’s parents, we had 100 themed science centers.  The first center was predicting how far up a cup would be filled with 100 drops of water.  Students compared their prediction to the actual outcome.   About half of the students predicted that the 100 drops of water would fill up the entire cup!  However, they quickly discovered that the 100 drops ACTUALLY barely filled up the bottom of the cup.  One student then predicted that it would take 150,000 drops to fill the cup!  I told him that was a great prediction!!! 

 Students showing their prediction line on their cups.   

 Transferring 100 drops of water!

The next center students got to know 100cm.  They discovered what things were greater than 100cm (i.e. THEMSELVES!!!), less than 100cm (a book or poster), and things that were equal to 100cm (paper taped together to perfectly make 100cm. I found there isn't much that is equal to 100cm.) 

Students are GREATER THAN 100cm!

Another center was predicting what is heavier?  100 popped pieces of popcorn OR 100 not popped kernels of popcorn.  The students discovered they were equal to!!!  Who would have known?! 

Heavier?? 100 Popped or 100 Not Popped

Check it out! It's equal to!!

The last center was a favorite, but proved to be VERY difficult.  The students were asked to build a 100 cup structure!  Students had great ideas, but they were not always the easiest to follow through with.  Some students made a circle tower, others tried to build a fortress around their buddy, but the cups wouldn’t cooperate and kept falling!  I loved their positive attitudes and effort regardless! 

 They only had a few cups left before it all tumbled to the ground!  But it looks great here!!

This group kept trying and trying!! but standing still proved to be very difficult!!

Once we finished centers, we took 100 steps out of our classroom and made it about halfway through the library!  After the 100 step trek, the students earned their 100^th day treat from Mrs. Kressin!  

Finally it was time to announce the winner of the 100 M&M and 100 Marshmallow vote.  At first everyone was disappointed to find out that everyone guessed the wrong one for both contests!  Lucky for the class, then they were ALL able to share the M&M’s and marshmallows instead of just one person. 

 Voting! 

 Correct answer was: D

Correct Answer was: B

We ended the day with a bouncy ball competition, how many times can you bounce the ball in 100 seconds!  The students took a few moments to write what their favorite thing they learned over the last 100 days was.   Here are some of the students responses: …..that we learned that the earth orbits the sun, about fairy penguins, that fairy penguins like to stay in groups, learning about frogs, etc.  

Couple quick videos!

I wanted to show these two videos!  The first video is of the students partner teaching each other about what they know about writing an informational report. 

The next video, I love how this student takes her time to solve the problem!  Awesome!!!

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! 

The Lonely Pirate!

 

 

 

We had a fantastic surprise this week! (Students above are showing their surprised face!)  One of our very own students was the author and illustrator of their own book. The book was titled “The Lonely Pirate”. The student helped Mrs. Kressin read the story to the class. The Meta cognitive strategy we were working on that day was “Asking questions”. The questions could be direct and easily answered by looking in the text or they could be questions you have think or search to find the answer. The Lonely Pirate was a great book. The students had so many questions as we followed the main character, the lonely pirate. The beginning of the book began with a lonely pirate all alone on a ship. In the middle of the book, the pirate crashed into an island. On this island there were more pirates. At the end of the book, the pirates on the island became the lonely pirate’s friend and he was no longer lonely. J The students were so interested in the book; they came up with the most outstanding questions before reading the book, during the reading and after the reading!

 

After Reading:"I wonder if he is going to have fun with his new pirate friends?"

During Reading: "I wonder if he is going to make new friends on the island?" 

After Reading: "I wonder if there is going to be a Lonely Pirate Part 2?" 

Before Reading: "Did his crew get eaten by sharks?"

During Reading: "I wonder if they will all go hunting?"

digraphs, composing and decomposing numbers, >,<,=

Between last week and the beginning of this week, we have been reviewing everything that we learned prior to break and the entire second quarter.  I was pleasantly surprised that the students were still masters of most of the learning we had accomplished before break.  For phonics we have been working hard at blending (putting together sounds and words) and segmenting (breaking apart sounds and words).  We have worked on the digraphs “th, sh, and wh”.   The students get excited now when they see “sh” , I hear, “Mrs. Kressin look its sh which says shhhhhhh.” J  They are such quick learners!  If you want to see some fun movements for each digraph, ask the students to show you at home! J (Like I said in the previous blog, I am still trying to figure out why this blog site won’t let me upload pictures and videos like I use to, but when I do I will be adding some FANTASTIC videos.)

In Math the students have been working on composing and decomposing numbers.  When we are decomposing numbers we are putting them into groups of tens and ones.  Many students can look at a number now, say 56, and tell you that they will need 5 groups of tens and 6 ones.  Their learning was accelerated by competition.  The entire class raced against Mrs. Kressin to decompose 105 blocks into groups of tens and ones.  It took them a couple tries to beat my original time, but they prevailed!  One thing I try to constantly remind the Kindergarteners is to believe in themselves.  Sometimes at this age (some people are this way at any age but…) students are quick to doubt their ability.  (i.e. “we’ll never beat Mrs. Kressin…”)  I always tell the students they can do anything they put their mind too, it will just take some practice!  I have been decomposing blocks into groups of tens and ones for years! (haha…not exactly true, but I also have some fantastic problem solving skills, that they will develop in years to come. J)  Anyways, I love watching their confidence soar in every aspect of their life, as well as with their math and reading skills. 

A few minor changes have been made so some of our centers.  One of the favorite math centers is “building cups” I had always asked the students once they built their towers to use “math talk” to discuss which tower had more cups or less and in turn which number was greater than or less than.  Now I don’t have the students discuss this, they have to write the statement on the board correctly labeling it with >,<, or + symbol.  Here is a picture of the students working at this center.  They found that 28 is less than 30. (28<30).  If the students need help remembering, they know that the alligator always eats the bigger number. J

The Polar Express came to Kindergarten!

Hello families,

 

I know this blog is a few weeks late, but in my defense, me and my family have only been home for 3 nights at our home since December 20th! I am so ready to be back home and back to some normalcy and teaching! I hope everyone had a fantastic break and got to spend some quality time with their families.  I have also been having some technical difficulties with this blog.  It has not been allowing me to upload any of my videos.  I'm going to keep trying but for now all I have are pictures.   Before we left for break, we celebrated with viewing “The Polar Express”.   Although we were able to enjoy the movie with some special hot cocoa and marshmallows, we still had some learning to do.  To align with common core standards, we identified the characters, setting and major events of the movie. 




We compared and contrasted the similarities and differences between the book and the movie.  The students also identified real-life connections between words and acted out the meaning of that word and similar words.  For example, as we were watching the movie, I would pause to have the students act out the words: “outstretched, flickered, pranced, hissing, aboard, etc.)  There are so many times in books, stories, movies, and in every day conversation that we pass right over words that we assume that young people know and if you stop and ask them if they know what they word is, they will let you know.  (Another example, many students in class did not understand what the word “text” meant, so we spent some time discussing that text is really a fancy word for words in a book, magazine, etc.) 

 

The students got to open their presents from Mrs. Kressin and pass out their goodies to their friends. I must extend a gracious thank you to everyone!  I loved my gifts, especially the homemade notes and written letters of appreciation.   I will cherish them FOREVER!!!  Thank you.