I hope you all enjoyed your day off during our Professional Development Day. Our staff attended a wonderful workshop on Balanced Numeracy. We looked at ways to improve our math teaching, making it more engaging and accessible to all learners. We started to experiment with some of the ideas this week. The kids were very receptive. As I introduce new math activities and games I will share with you how you can play at home. Here are some websites/ blogs for anyone interested in learning a little more about what math can look like in Kindergarten.
Hands-on Math
Tuesday:
It was great to have the kids back today. They were extremely excited to take out their first library books. I hope you all enjoyed their choices. Mrs. Leslie read the class one of the Surrey Book of the Year nominees, The Bad Seed about a sunflower seed. This was a happy coincidence as I brought in a sunflower from my backyard for the students to observe this morning. Some students were very interested in examining the flower and drawing representations of what they noticed.
In the afternoon we read "Five Creatures" which helps the students to start thinking about different ways to sort and group items. The students drew a picture of all the "creatures" that live in their houses. You can see the display in the hallway.
Wednesday:
Mrs. Kinton's class joined us outside today for a story. The students created poses for each of the cloud shapes in the story. We then tried to see if we could use our imaginations to see shapes in the clouds. Unfortunately, there was really only one cloud, but the students came up with some creative ideas.
We had a chance to quickly visit with our big buddy class today. They big buddies interviewed their little buddies and scribed their answers on a fact sheet. The partners then worked together to colour and decorate it.
After music in the afternoon, we read a book called "Telephone" and then played the classic game, Telephone where you whisper a message to the person beside you and see if it can make it all the way around the circle without changing... . The kids loved it! It was a fun and calm way to end our day.
Thursday:
In the morning we talked about Terry Fox and how we honour and remember him by continuing to Run every year to raise money for his Foundation. Each of the students wrote Terry on their "I'm Running For" sticker.
Thank you to the volunteers at the Terry Fox fun and all the families who came to Meet the Teacher. It's so nice for you all to get the opportunity to visit with each other and to see the space that your children are spending so much time in.
Friday:
We worked together to create our alphabet letters for our Word Wall. On this wall we will start to put up words that the students are interested in using in their writing. We will start with all the names of the students in our class. We have a lot of kids who are eager to start writing, so this will be a great resource or them.
As some of you may have noticed, we do not have an alphabet line up on the wall (which is strange for a kindergarten classroom), don't worry, it is coming! We are participating in a Province-Wide alphabet exchange. 26 different Kindergarten classrooms have been assigned a different letter. We will decorate the letters in a unique way and attach a letter telling a little bit about our community and school. We have been assigned with the letter Xx. Once each class completes their letter, they will mail them. As the letters arrive we will place them up on the wall, slowly building our eclectic alphabet.
We introduced our Zones of Regulation, which categorizes emotions, feelings and behaviours into 4 zones, Blue, Green, Yellow and Red. This program works to help students identify their feelings and the feelings of others and use strategies to get themselves into the Green Zone (Content, Ready to Learn). So if you hear "I'm in the ______ zone." That's why!
Our big buddy class was away on a field trip, so we asked a grade 2 class to stand-in for an afternoon buddy-reading session. Mrs. Langton's grade 2's brought their poetry books to share with our class. They grade 2's were so excited to be BIG buddies for the day. They enjoyed it so much that Mrs. Langton and I decided that we would make this an end of month tradition. So now we have a Medium Buddy class and a Big Buddy class.
To acknowledge Orange Shirt Day, we read "Precious and Sacred" by Debora Abood, and talked about how no matter what, "Every Child Matters" and that everyone deserves to be treated with kindness, respect, and love. We then looked at some coast Salish art representing different sea animals. The students guessed what animal the images represented and I shared with them the reason that the specific animals were held sacred by the Coast Salish people.
Stories this week:
The Bad Seed by Jory John
Shhh! We have a plan by Chris Haughton
Five Creatures by Emily Jenkins
Little Cloud by Eric Carle
Home by Carson Ellis
Here is a link to the Author and Illustrator talking about the book and showing her home.
Carson Ellis and her Home
Toto's Apple by Mathieu Lavoie
I was born Precious and Sacred by Debora Abood
Telephone by Mac Barnett
Songs:
How to be a cloud by Kira Wiley
Jump, Run , Shout by Cool Aerobics for Kids
If you're Happy Happy Happy by Super Simple Songs
I will be sending a quick newsletter to update October events and will also send home the permission form for the October 16th field trip to Surrey Nature Centre. We will be looking for volunteer drivers. We will be leaving around noon and returning to school for 2:30 dismissal.
A few more pictures from the week:
