Five for Friday- It's All About Reading and Writing

It's been a great week!  Here are some highlights...

This was part of our morning meeting today:

I'm. Not. Kidding. Luckily it was brief and turned to rain by the afternoon!  The kids got a kick out of the contrast though! 

Our writing center is up and running! Thanks to my mentor teacher and some resources from A Cupcake for the Teacher, the kids are really enjoying getting to create and write different projects. I do need to add some vocabulary support and keep monitoring that students are actually writing and using and putting away resources properly. I think I am going to grab a few great writing examples as they complete them, hold them up and talk about them to the entire class for motivation.

Last week I wrote about how we read "Giggle Giggle Quack." In the book, the Farmer takes a vacation and Duck, posing as the farmer, leaves silly notes about what the animals want Bob to do for them. The escapades include ordering pizza and watching movies. So we wrote about what we would ask Bob to do if we were Duck and finished up the writing this week. 

There were lots of laughs while doing this. I love the detail in this one.  In case you are not fluent in kindergarten writing, it says "I would like you to take us to the bowling alley and after that I would like you to take us to the ice cream!"  

A is for apple

On Tuesday I went to a phonological awareness workshop. If there is an area of reading instruction in which I am a bit weaker, it is this one.  I feel a bit "sloppy" at times when implementing our daily five to ten minute PA activities from the reading program, and sometimes they seem pointless or boring for my kiddos who are already up and reading.  The presenter made some interesting points...good phonological awareness activities are essential for all students, and can be done "in the dark," meaning it is all about sound, no letter names or symbols should be connected.  I knew this, but hearing it described in that way was eye-opening!  (No pun intended, of course!)  I know I sometimes let a letter name slip. ("Listen for the B boys and girls!") Although she was conducting her session for a particular company, she introduced many easy little PA activities that I have been implementing during hallway wait time this week.  I think I just need to build up a good bank of activities and make it a habit.  In our reading program we tried substitution of beginning sounds for the first time this week.  I made it sound more like a game and used our puppet.  They loved it!  I am recommitted to trying to work activities like these in throughout our school day! 

We had a slight relapse in our Daily 5 implementation this week. My lowest group keeps complaining that they CAN'T READ and are having a very hard time working with partners.  We did a whole lesson on the three ways to read a book!  I am going to have to try to reteach/model Read to a Partner in their teacher group next week. 

And that's it!  We had a wonderful week. See Doodle Bugs Teaching for all the other Five for Friday posts!