We are off to a terrific start in Kindergarten! The children are learning the routine and rules of school very quickly. In observing our class, a staff member could not believe we have only been in school for one week.
I believe that all of my students can behave appropriately in our
classroom. Expectations are taught in a manner that is appropriate and
easy for a five-year-old child to understand. All children deserve a positive, fun learning environment.
Therefore, our class started right off on our kindergarten standard of understanding that following rules promotes safety and learning for our classroom. We created rules and learned the rules that already exist in our building. And we learned that our actions affect others in a group.
To help introduce the rules, we participated in an author study of David Shannon and read his books, No, David and David Goes to School. The children love the character of David, and David helped them connect to "no" choices and "yes" choices. We created Peacemaker and Peacebreaker charts to help us understand appropriate learning behavior for our classroom. Next week, we will create a class book with yes and no choices.
Our school and classroom expectations are summed up in being on SPOT:
S - Safe
P - Positive
O - On Task
T - Team Player
We also learned about the 3 Thinkers - Fair Minded Fran, Selfish Sam and Naive Nancy. These characters help our kindergarten friends to think about their thinking.
For our literacy lesson, we read The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn. After reading the book, our class participated in the following activities:
* Shared Reading of pocket chart and mini book, Chester Loves School.
* Traced hand and placed heart sticker in the middle
* Made a Chester raccoon sack puppet
* Learned sign language for "I love you."
In math, we are working in small centers, exploring with math manipulatives. We are not only learning how to use the manipulatives in the appropriate way, but we are learning how to work and share with each other.
Specific skills to work on for these next couple of weeks is for the students to be able to tell their first and and last name and to write their name the kindergarten way - first letter capital, the rest small.
If "what did you do today at school?" isn't getting you much of a response, questions you might want to ask are:
* What did you learn today that you didn't know before?
* What songs did you sing?
* What friends did you play with today?
* What did you make?
* What was your favorite center?
* Can you chant me a poem or sing me a song you learned?
* What book did you read?
* What was the funniest thing that happened?
* Who were you nice to today? Who did you help?
* What story did you tell or write about?
* What can't you wait to do next time at school?
* What did you do that showed that you were a learner?
* Can you give me an example of how your thinking was fair minded today?
* Can you chant me a nursery rhyme?
