WE ARE READERS!!! We've finished our first Unit of Reader's Workshop this week! In this unit we focused a lot on learning ways to "read" a nonfiction ("learn-about-the-world") story, as well as reading storybooks. We learned about how we don't always have to read words, but can read by retelling a story we know so well, or reading the pictures to tell what information a book is teaching us. To celebrate the amazing reading the kindergarteners have done, we had a huge parade in the school today! All students and staff of MES lined the hallways of Montgomery and the kindergartners paraded down the halls. Each student held their "trophy" from our reading unit. We talked about how trophies are what someone earns when they have accomplished something they have worked hard at. So, our trophies were our books that we worked so hard to read. Each student had a ribbon to shine up their trophy, and we paraded to the song "Celebrate" down the halls as students from grades playschool-8 cheered us on. They made posters for the kindergartners, celebrating how hard they worked. They had noise-makers to make if feel like a parade. And they clapped and cheered. It was the greatest feeling! Such a great thing to watch, as all the kids were so proud of what they had done! Afterwards, we even went into all the middle school classrooms and showed them how we could read our books. Kids took turns reading to bigger kids, and showing how hard they had worked! **Above are some of the pictures, and below are videos of our class parading in the school and reading to some 8th graders! Pumpkin science....yay! Yesterday I brought out 3 pumpkins and told the class we would be doing some science with our pumpkins. I asked them how they thought we could use science with them, and many answers revolved around baking, cooking, and carving the pumpkins :) So, we discussed in a science meeting what we learned previously about what scientists do. They use their 5 senses to wonder and learn about things. In our meetings, we discussed with each other what we noticed about the three different pumpkins laying in front of us. Students shared that they could see and learn just by looking at the pumpkins. A lot of kids talked about their color, size, stems, lines, shape and brightness of the orange color. We then realized that in order to learn more about the pumpkins, we needed to actually test some stuff out with our hands. Students worked in groups and each took one of the pumpkins. Groups drew their pumpkins (as all scientists should do), measured how tall they were with cubes, determined if it was small, medium or large, and counted how many lines it had (we had to use math skills for this one, counting in a circle means we mark where we start). After this, students had to predict like scientists whether their pumpkin would float or sink in water. Almost all students predicted they would sink (especially if they were the larger, heavier pumpkins!). But...after all three groups tested, we realized that all pumpkins float! We predicted that even if it was a pumpkin as big as a table, it would probably still float! Cool! The last thing we did was cut them open to dig out the seeds. "Ewwww", "Gross", "Squishy"...these were just some of the remarks made by students. Some loved digging in the mush, some needed gloves to protect their hands from the goo, while others kept away and plugged their noses. All the seeds had to be removed and put on a tray so they could dry out. Today we took all our dried seeds and practiced counting by 10s to count all the seeds! We placed the seeds on 10-frames like we've been learning in math so it would be faster to count them all. The results were... Small Pumpkin: 163 seeds Medium Pumpkin: 850 seeds Large Pumpkin: 570 seeds Our videos below shows just some of the fun we had, and some of the remarks being made today :) The third video also shows our new "5 Little Pumpkins" song/book we read and learned yesterday! **Tomorrow we'll get to enjoy the work of all we did with a yummy roasted pumpkin seed snack! We have up to so much this month in kindergarten! Time sure does fly when you’re having fun! The amount of learning and exploring student’s have been doing is incredible, and I’m so proud of all their hard work. We’ve developed so many skills in Reader’s Workshop, learning how to retell familiar storybooks and sound like the characters when reading. Student’s learn to read by themselves, with partners, and to stuffed animal “students” so they develop the skill to read aloud and sound like a teacher. In Writer’s Workshop, student’s worked hard writing “teaching books”, and they continued to write book after book after book! At the end of this writing, they got to pick their favorite teaching book they wrote and revise it and make it the best it could be. We learned to go back and add more pictures, more words and labels, and make sure we know how to read our own book. Once students practiced reading to each other in our class...we took our finished books to the first grade room and read to the first graders! It’s so exciting to share the hard work we do with others, so many times this year students will get to read their finished writing books to the first graders. We’ve also started learning what Social Studies is. We will alternate between science investigations (our favorite!) and social studies this year. To really learn about the world around us, we first begin Social Studies by learning about who WE are. Once we understand that we are all different from each other, we can begin to learn about where we live and other parts of the world. We made “All About Me” books and read books that helped us hear how we should be proud of who we are no matter how different we may look or different we may be compared to others. The rest of this month (so far) has been filled with fun events, such as picture day, leaf collecting for fall art projects, and a visit from the Montgomery fire fighters to learn about fire safety. We’ve also been learning about taking weather each day so we can compare each month at the end of the year and notice any weather patterns. September ended up being mostly sunny and hot. Our month is still going, and we have much more in store this year. Enjoy the pictures of our kindergarten adventures below :) |