We Are So Proud

It is part of our daily routine to stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance - but in celebration of Patriot's Day and Constitution Day this week we talked about why we say the Pledge of Allegiance and what it means.  We practiced standing tall and "to attention" and having our eyes on the flag as we place our right hands over our hearts.  As difficult as it is for some to stand still, they definitely say the Pledge with pride!

                      Our book of the week was called We Are So Proud.

In honor of their country, all the members of Ms. Vogels' class cooperate to make American flags to fly in their parade.

As a follow up activity, we made our own American flags to display in our room.  We learned about the colors in our flag, the stars and the stripes.  And luckily, everyone remembered how to make a pattern!

I think it's safe to say that we too are very proud of our country!

Another favorite activity of the week was our version of the game Headbanz.  We paired up and practiced our sight words by flipping them to our foreheads.  One partner spelled the word to the one holding the card and that person had to say the sight word.  The kids loved it!

Please practice the weekly sight words with your child at home.  The more sight words we know, the easier it becomes to read.  Sight word recognition is also a confidence booster when learning to read because if a child can recognize two to four words in a sentence they already feel like they are reading!

We celebrated Makayla Cooper as our Student of the Week and she shared with us one of her favorite toys (a very cool drum stick).  We also got to learn many fun things from Makayla's mini poster.

This coming week we will be celebrating Lila Serfani!!

Lila always has a great attitude and tries hard to move her clip up to the positive side.  She is kind to her classmates and always willing to help out.  I am very proud to honor her as Student of the Week!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Class Book + Writer's Workshop

While I have several things to share already this week, I'm gonna just give you a teaser so you'll be sure to check back for the rest! :)

I was so fortunate to have a Donors Choose project funded before school started and one of the primary donors was a kindergarten grandparent.  She made it possible for our class to have a binding machine with which we can make our own class books.

I received the machine last week and finally got it unpacked and ready to roll.  We put together our first book and I am so happy it will actually stand a chance in our library!

We wrote The ABC's of Mrs. Stinnett's Class.  Here are a few sample pages...

I mentioned in an earlier post that we are working hard to build stamina in reading, but we are also building stamina in writing.  During our Writer's Workshop today we built 13 minutes of stamina.  This means that the kids wrote for 13 minutes straight following all procedures!  I think they were even amazed by the quality of their own work when we were done.  Just listen for yourself...

 
Just in case you haven't check the "Keep" side of your child's binder, you should find a Grandparent's Day card that we made for our grandparents.  Grandparent's Day was actually September 8th, but I still wanted to do a mini-lesson on what grandparents mean to us and why we love them.  I hope there are grandparents from our class that will receive their cards.

From Swaye

From Taylor

From Cole

Thank you so much for those of you who have purchased from our Scholastic Catalog and from our Book Fair.  I am constantly in awe of the support we receive as a school from our parents.  And I really think I might have the most supportive parents in my class! :)  We really couldn't do it without you!

Check back soon!

Star Student + Rules

Every week will celebrate a special student in the class who shows great behavior and work study skills.   Parents will receive a letter providing instructions on how to help their Star Student fill out their mini poster that will hang in our classroom.  The Star Student will get to share a book or an item of their choice at the end of week as we also read all of the wonderful information from their poster.


This week's Star Student is Makayla Cooper.  She has demonstrated wonderful behavior from the first day of school.  She has already been on +3 several times and has really worked hard to get there.  She also shows great work ethic in class and sets a great example for her peers.

Congratulations, Makayla!!

I also wanted to share a quick video that I took on Friday.  Every morning we recite our classroom rules and engage ourselves by using hand movements.  Our Helper of the Day leads the rules - Friday's helper was Matthew W.  Enjoy :)

Birthdays + Daily Five

Before I introduce Daily Five, I want to say Happy Belated Birthday to Eden!  She turned 5 years old on August 13th.  We celebrated Eden's birthday in class yesterday by singing her Happy Birthday and giving her a birthday crown to wear for the day.

We also have a birthday coming up on September 8th!  Gabriel turns 6!  Since his birthday falls on Sunday we will celebrate either tomorrow or Monday.  His mom is bringing cupcakes!!!  Yum! :)

This week we've been focusing on Daily Five.  This structure removes all of the guesswork from the children concerning classroom routines and procedures and allows them to concentrate fully on learning.

Soon your child will be talking about “The Daily Five” at home. This literacy structure teaches independence and gives children the skills needed to create a lifetime love of reading and writing. It consists of five tasks that are introduced individually.

• Read to Self
• Read to Someone
• Listen to Reading
• Work on Writing
• Word Work

When introduced to each task, the children discuss what it looks like, sounds like,
and feels like to engage in the task independently. Then, the children work on building their stamina until they are successful at being independent while doing that task.

When all five tasks have been introduced and the children are fully engaged in reading and writing activities, I am able to work with small groups and confer with children one on one. This structure is proven effective, the results are amazing, and the children really look forward to Daily Five time. Ask your child about Daily Five and see what he/she has to say. I anticipate your child will tell you about the class stamina, how we are working towards independence, and maybe you will even hear about some of the fantastic things your child has written, read, or listened to during our structured reading time.

Here are a few pictures of our "Read to Self" time as we are building our stamina to read independently.

In addition to Read to Self, we will begin building stamina for Work on Writing next week.  We will continue adding each component to Daily Five as the kids see fit.

Names + All About Me

Our first full week was challenging, but successful!  Getting accustomed to the classroom rules and procedures is always the toughest part, but by Friday I felt like we were well on our way.  As we sail into our second week, I'm hoping "clipping down" becomes less popular and "clipping up" becomes the new trend.

We finished up our Name Unit on Friday and I was so impressed by how quickly the kids learned each other's names.  We even scrambled up the letters in our names to see if we could recognize each one - and the kids got every single name right!

I always start this unit off by reading the book Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes.

Not only is this a great book to introduce names, but it also teaches a great lesson about being kind to our friends.  We talked about how being different is ok and that we should all be proud of who we are no matter what people say.

In the book, Chrysanthemum is teased for having such a long name - 13 letters to be exact.  I always like to point out that it's actually quite impressive to have a long name and be able to spell it correctly!

We put together our own Class Name Graph to see how many letters we each had in our names.

Looks like our number one is falling off - oops.

We concluded that Elizabeth had the most letters (9) and we had a four way tie for the least number of letters - Eden (4), Ella (4), Tate (4) and Cole (4).

In addition to our graph, we also did Rainbow Writing with our friend's names as well as Play Doh names!

We finished up our All About Me books on Friday and they are FABULOUS!  Once again, the kids completely exceeded my expectations.  They are now proudly hanging on our bulletin board outside of of our classroom.

We are in the beginning stages of Writer's Workshop and Daily Five.  You will be hearing more about these structures as the year progresses.

One very important component of Writer's Workshop is sharing.  I allowed everyone to share their writing this week to get an idea of what it is like and to hopefully get over any fears of speaking in front of the class.  I was surprised to see that most everyone seemed comfortable.   In fact, they were eager to be the next one to share.

The Daily Five is the structure I use in my class that helps the students develop the daily habits of reading, writing and working independently.  It consists of five centers - read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, word work and work on writing.

This week we discussed the three ways to read a book.

I modeled how to read the pictures in a book.  I then used the same book and read the words.  The kids realized that they could gain a similar understanding of the book by just reading the pictures - therefore, they can READ even though they can't read the words.

They were also surprised when they realized they could retell the story that we had just read - therefore, once again, they can READ!

To encourage reading and picking books of interest, I had the kids highlight five books in their Scholastic Readers that they would like to read.  Just by giving them the power of choice, they immediately demonstrated a love of reading.  This is our ultimate goal!

I hope everyone had a wonderful, long weekend!  See y'all tomorrow!