Wednesday, August 9, 2017

A Fresh Start!

Today marks the end of our first full week of school in the 2017-2018 school year!
So what have we been up to with this new crop of kiddos? Glad you asked!

On the first day, we read The Kissing Hand and went on a scavenger hunt around the school searching for Chester Raccoon.
We didn't find him.  The kids thought we should check every backpack when we got back to the room!  Then they wanted me to check the ceiling tiles!


Of course there was a lot of practicing how to walk in a line, how to come to the carpet, what to do when we need help, how to unpack, etc.  They've gotten the procedures down quickly.  It doesn't matter that this is my 8th year doing this (my mom asked me today if it was my 6th year teaching or 7th... #gettingold) I always forget how exhausting it is to teach procedures at the beginning of the year.  "And this is how we walk to the carpet!" "And this is how we sit on the carpet!" "And this is how we line up!" "And this is how we use a pencil!" "And this is what we DON'T do with a pencil!" 

We went over expectations for use of pencils, crayons, scissors, & glue.  Which meant we had to practice cutting...


And coloring... and gluing... and after a little practice with each, we combined all those tasks in one with our No, David craft:


The most remarkable thing happened with this group. We don't have anyone saying "I can't" or "I won't."  Everyone is willing to try.  When you have a class full of kids with that mentality, the sky's the limit!  So we've already started reading response journals. I read a story, and they "write" about a prompt I give.  Students draw a picture to show their favorite part of the story, or the problem in the story, or how they're like the characters.  It's never to early to get children to write in response to a text! 

Students have also had independent reading time:

We've also practiced making letters, words or names with kinetic sand and counting with buttons (which are just some of the materials found in each student's toolkit).  The toolkits allow immediate hands-on practice during lessons and provide a perfect engaging activity for early finishers!

We've also been learning some nursery rhymes and illustrating them (below left), and today we read Ten Black Dots and made pictures using varied amounts of black dots (below right).

So the focus this week has been as follows:
-Procedures
-Writing: Drawing a picture and orally telling a story (who was there, where you were, what happened)
-Reading: Caring for books properly and looking at pictures in non-fiction books to learn about the world, writing in response to a read-aloud
-Math: Exploring manipulatives, counting ten objects

I can't wait to get into small-group work with this group of students.  I can already tell they have so much to offer!



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