Eric Carle

Poem: Merry-Go-Round
Sight Words: now, find

Reading:
Comprehension Strategy: This week our focus was on the skill, skip the word and come back. This is something I teach the kiddos to use when they come across a tricky word and others skills aren't helping to decode the word. Sometimes it helps students understand and determine the word when they read the rest of the sentence. To help understand this concept we used Skippy the Frog to practice. Using Google Slides students read sentences with a missing word. Skippy the Frog was covering everything in the word, except the beginning letter. After decoding the word, Skippy disappeared and a picture appeared in order for us to check our word.

Accuracy: This week we learned about r controlled words. Each day we learned about a new pair starting with ar, er, ir, or, and finishing with ur.

Vocabulary: A House for Hermit Crab is the story by Eric Carle that was used for vocabulary. We learned the words gingerly, debris, promise, plain, decorate, and frightening. This story is a great story about a crab who wants to add to his plain shell.

iPads: Draw & Tell: Students scanned a QR code and listened to "The Very Hungry Caterpillar". Then used Draw & Tell to illustrate and record themselves eating things every day of the week similar to the caterpillar.

PicEDU: Students continue working with vowel pairs by writing the missing vowel in each word using the doodle or font feature.

Writing: This week students learned about opinion starters. This includes "The best thing about", "The worst thing about..", "___ is the best", "My favorite", etc. This encourages students to begin thinking about what they're writing and branch out from "I like" sentences.

The rest of the week students were encouraged to find the missing piece of the OREO template. Each day I had a pre-made writing piece that was missing the O (opinion), R (reason), E (example), or O (opinion). They were great at identifying the missing piece and how I could fix it.

On Friday we had a guest teacher and students listened to the story "Duck Rabbit". Students then had to make an opinion about whether they thought it was a duck or rabbit and why.

Math: This week we starting solving addition story problems. We first used cut out pictures to help solve story problems that were told aloud. Some were told my Mrs. Keller and then our friends started the tell the story. Each day we learned about a different way we could solve story problems including using Doodle Buddy to use the stamps, dry erase boards to draw pictures, and math tools to move around. On Thursday we introduced a new math with someone activity that allowed us to tell and solve addition story problems with a friend. After next week we will add subtraction in the mix.

Vocabulary: This week we learned about the phrase all together. That means that when you add numbers together all together refers to the number you have in all after adding groups.

Content: This week we spent time learning about Eric Carle. We started by watching a video of Eric Carle sharing how he makes his creations. Throughout the week we read stories and enjoyed his beautiful illustrations. On Thursday we got to be with each kindergarten teacher as they rotated around to each classroom to help us create a masterpiece. Mrs. Ruhl came and helped us make spiders in webs from the book "The Very Busy Spider". Mrs. Brekke came and used our grumpy pictures to create a replica of "The Very Grouchy Ladybug". Mrs. Bunch came and made tissue paper seahorses with us to go along with the book "Mister Seahorse". And Mrs. Waber came to create fireflies to go with the book "The Very Lonely Firefly".

SEL (Social Emotional Learning): Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.

This week we started a 2 week unit about Self-Esteem. This is such an important and impactful skill that some kiddos need some guidance in thinking about. In this day in age, it is easy to let what others think impact how you feel about yourself so we have to be confident in knowing what makes us special! We started the week by reading the book "I Like Myself". Then we watched a video of Howard B. Wigglebottom about how he loved to dance and continued dancing because it made him happy. Then we read "The OK Book". Follow us next week as we continue this unit. 

NEXT WEEK:
Reading: Students will...
-learn about -s, -ed, and -ing endings. 
-compare and contrast stories and characters. 

Writing: Students will...
-review punctuation. 
-continue writing opinions. 

Math: Students will...
-learn about subtraction story problems. 
-learn how to take away. 

Content: Students will learn about zoo animals before our trip on May 8th. 

Insect (Week 2)

Poem: Humpty Dumpty
Sight Words: good, put

Reading:
Comprehension Strategy: This week students learned how to apply the reading strategy called cross-checking. When reading and something doesn't make sense or it doesn't sound right you have to cross-check. We use the phrase "Does it look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense?" We practiced this using picture cards by checking the word with the picture and we practiced with a partner while reading a leveled reader.

Accuracy: This week students learned words in the -ay and -ai word families. We wrote our list of words, read the slides, and finished the week with FlipGrid. Check out a few of our videos!

Vocabulary: This week students learned the words creep, swoop, weaves, flutter, blink, and crawl in the book "I Love Bugs". This is a fun book that talks about the many ways insects and bugs move around.

iPads:
PicEDU: This week students used PebbleGo to save a picture of an insect. They then went into picEDU to label the parts of that insect.

QR Codes: Students used QR codes on blue cards to scan and reveal a picture. They then used that picture to determine the word and write the missing vowel. This was a great way to incorporate vowel pairs that we have been working on.

Writing: This week during Writer's Workshop we read the story "Fancy Nancy" and learned how we can make plain words fancy. We made a chart of plain words and words that we could replace them with to make our writing better. The remainder of the week we continued learning and practicing writing opinion pieces. On Thursday we made a collage of other books we love to read and listen to as inspiration for another opinion writing.

We ended the week with reading the book "Hey Little Ant". Students had to write their opinion about how the book should end. Should the little boy step on the ant? Or should the little boy not step on the ant? They completed their writing with an illustration of the ant and the big shoe.

Math: This week we learned about ways to compose numbers. We used counters and number bonds to show different ways to make numbers, we also used our tens frame paddles to show ways to make numbers. We are learning a lot of different strategies of finding different ways to make numbers 1-9.

Vocabulary: This week's word was compose. Compose means to put numbers together to make a new number.

iPads: For ipads this week students used popplet to record ways to compose different numbers. Students started by rolling 1 or 2 dice to determine their number. Then they used 2 sided counters to show the ways to compose that number. They used pictures to then make their web in popplet.

Content: This week we continued to learn about insects. We completed entries in our butterfly journal that showed the caterpillars in the chrysalis and we labeled the parts of an insect. We also sorted pictures of insects and other bugs/animals that were not an insect.

SEL (Social Emotional Learning): Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.

This week our focus has been on Honesty. This was our 2nd week in this particular unit. On Monday we used a chart to discuss the qualities of an honest person. This helped us understand that an honest person does more than just use words to tell the truth. On Tuesday we listened to different scenarios to determine if kiddos told the truth or not. If they were dishonest then we discussed ways they could have been more honest. 

On Wednesday we did a fun lesson about honesty where I was excited to pass out candy to the students. They held out their hands and I passed out green peas to each of them. They quickly realized that it was not candy and laughed when I told them I tricked them. I tried again and said I would give them a piece of candy this time, but I didn't. By the third time around, they didn't believe me. They saw green in my hand and they thought I was going to give them a pea again. So when we talked about why, we said that many times we say something that we think might be funny but not true. This is still lying and we are not being honest. The more we do that the more people do not trust us. 

We finished the week with illustrations of how we can be honest in different places. On Friday we read the story, "The Boy Who Saw Big Foot". This is a fun twist of the story the boy who cried wolf. The kids loved it and it was a great way to end our unit. 

NEXT WEEK:
Reading: Students will...
-learn about r controlled words and make lists of words including ar, er, ir, or, and ur.
-learn how to skip the word and come back. 

Writing: Students will...
-learn about different opinion starters. 
-continue writing opinion writing pieces. 

Math: Students will...
-learn about and solve addition story problems. 

Content: Students will learn about the author Eric Carle. Students will learn about him and participate in craft rotations. 

Insects (Week 1)

Poem: Little Ball
Sight Words: little, would

Reading:
Comprehension Strategy: This students are learning what it means to visualize. This is an important skill because it keeps readers engaged during read alouds. If they are thinking about the words that are being read they can understand and picture what is happening in their head. To introduce and practice this skill students were introduced to the concept with a visual poster. We discussed what visualizing was and then we practiced with a short story where they were encouraged to draw a picture of what they heard. Throughout the week we practiced by listening to stories and thinking about what the pictures look like without seeing the book.

Accuracy: This week we continued learning about words with 2 vowels. This week we made lists of words with -ui and -oa. We watched videos, made lists,

Vocabulary: This week we read the story Oscar and the Frog. In this book students learned about how plants and animals grow. We added the following words to our chart: bank, gills, hatch, shrink, starred, and tadpole.

iPads: This week students went to pebble go to learn about insects. After learning some facts about insects students went to Chatterkid and recorded as many facts as they could remember about that insect.

Writing: This week in Writer's Workshop students learned about pronouns. We used our chart to learn what pronouns are and how we use them in our writing. We even practice replacing nouns with pronouns using dry erase boards as a class.

We also made a list of other movies and TV shows that we liked as we brainstormed topics we could write about. Students saw more examples of how to write a movie review with the planning page and then take the planning page to create the final draft.

Math: This week in math our skill was to find 2 ways to decompose a number. We practiced this skill a variety of ways including using 2 sided counters, drawing a picture, and using math tools with a number bond. The 2 sided counters is a strategy we have used before with ways to make 10, so students were able to do this easily.

On Wednesday we learned how we can draw a picture to find out 2 ways to decompose a number. We started with making dots. If we rolled a dice and landed on 6, we would make a line of 6 dots. Then we would draw a line somewhere inbetween the dots to show 2 groups. Then we would make another row of 6 dots and do the same thing showing a different way to decompose the number 6. This is sometimes a strategy many students chose to use because seeing it and making a picture like that helps.

Vocabulary: This week students learned the word decompose. Decompose means to break apart into 2 groups.

iPads: For ipads students used popplet to show ways to make 10. We will be doing the same task next week but for different numbers 1-9.

Content: This week we started our 2 week insect unit. We learned what an insect is and completed our chart as a class. We also started our butterfly observation journals. Each day students will record what they see in our jar in their journal using book creator. They work in partners and will watch and observe how the caterpillars change and have a better understanding of the lifecycle of a butterfly.

SEL (Social Emotional Learning): Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.

This week we started our 2 week unit about honesty. We started the week by reading the story "Lying Up a Storm". Students learned about the importance of telling the truth and how people aren't as upset you with when you tell the truth. We then listened to a story from PeekaPak about a girl named Menka who lied to her friends about a science project. We talked about her feelings and how lying made her feel really bad. We also listened to a song that talked about honesty and finished the week with a Pinocchio activity that helped us determine if stories were a lie or someone told the truth. Each lie that was told we added a block to his nose and watched it grow. 

NEXT WEEK:
Reading: Students will...
-learn words in the -ay and -ai families.
-learn how to cross-check when reading. 

Writing: Students will...
-learn how to make fancy words out of regular words. 
-continue writing opinion writing. 

Math: Students will...
-learn about the word compose.
-use number bonds to show ways to compose numbers. 

Content: Students will learn continue to learn about insects.