During our class meeting we learned about gratitude. We read the story Thankful and then identified all the things we are thankful for. Here is our list... Then we watched Kid President's video about the things he is thankful for. You can watch it here.
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Today we went to The College Park Aviation Museum to learn about air travel from the past and present. We got to try on clothes worn by pilots in the past and present. We created our own airplanes and launched them. We had a picnic lunch near the airport and watched for planes (although none came). Here are some pictures from the trip. When we got back to our classroom we collected data on our paper airplanes. We launched them and kept track of which plane went the farthest. Here are some pictures from the the fun. This week we learned all about trees. We started by identifying the external features of trees. Then we learned what each feature does and how it helps the tree. Ask your kinder to tell you about the trunk, bark, branches, leaves and roots!
We went outside and made tree observations. We compared two different trees and identified the similarities and differences. We noticed that trees come in different shapes. Today we learned about coniferous and deciduous trees. We went back outside to determine if the trees from our observation were deciduous or coniferous. Ask your kinder to tell you about their trees! Today we learned a new way to show the teen numbers. We learned that teen numbers are made up of ten ones and some more ones. Here is an example from our lesson today.
The kindergarteners did a great job at Rose Hill Manor. The staff even complimented our school on how wonderfully we behaved and how knowledgeable we were about the content covered on the trip! (Just what a teacher loves to hear!!) While at Rose Hill Manor we rotated to seven different areas. We saw:
Here are some pictures from the fun! Our reading specialist (Mrs. WIlkes) shared some interesting visuals with the staff about comprehension. Of course this got me thinking about kindergarten! At this point in the year the kinders are really starting to feel like readers. As a teacher it is so exciting to watch them discover books and the skills it takes to decode them. Many parents comment on the reading progress kinders make over the course of the year. I want to highlight a VERY important part of reading: COMPREHENSION!! So often we get excited that our child is reading the words, we forget about the other aspects of reading. We are reading text to learn. While reading words is great, we are not looking for kinders to be "word callers." Even at this early stage it is important to focus on all aspects of reading. Here is a crash course in comprehension: (from Kristine Nannini) But that does this mean for parents??
You can focus on comprehension when you are reading AND when your kinder reads to you! 1. Ask questions before reading the story.
2. Ask questions during the story.
3. Ask questions after reading the story.
You can focus on fluency when reading. In the simplest terms fluency means reading like we talk. Many parents get excited about how fast their kinder can read. Speed is not the goal--- expression is! For example, when we see an exclamation point our voice gets excited! When we see a question mark our voice goes up. You can model this at home with your kinder! Reading with expression can help improve our comprehension!! Happy Reading! Today we learned about persuasive writing. When we write persuasively, we try to convince others to think like we do. When we write persuasively, we write about our opinion. Today we shared our opinion on different topics. We learned that we can have different opinions. Here are some of the results.
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AuthorMiss. Matthews' Kindergarten Class Archives
June 2016
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