Archive for the 'Literacy' Category

Boy, Do We Have Questions!

Published on February 7, 2013 in Literacy and Science & Tech. 0 Comments

This is one of the tweet conversations we had on Digital Learning Day. The children created the ideas for questions to put out there in the Twitter-verse and we waited for replies. Classrooms are quite busy during the day and it takes real dedication to the activity in order to keep up with the conversations.

We also asked this question.

We compared class size with them too.

Questions are a big part of our learning now. Every day during Work Board, a small group will craft a question and write it on the easel with Mrs. Labrie. The children have little white boards and markers to practice writing the words themselves while they wait for their turn at the easel. At the end of the morning, the group shares the question they wrote.

I was unprepared for the depth of questions being asked and realize now that I need to reserve some time each day to research and answer these questions. Here is a sample from recent days.

Why does the earth turn?
Why does the moon change?
When is Valentines Day?
Why are there so many kids in our school?
Why does the moon change each nigh?
Why does day turn into night?
Why does ice cream melt?
What is paper made of?

February!

Published on February 1, 2013 in Literacy, Newsletters and Science & Tech. 0 Comments

We have made the turn! What turn is that? Why it’s the turn into the home stretch. We passed the 90th day of school this week and now we are full speed ahead until the children turn into first graders at the end of the year.

We had a fabulous storyteller by the name of Tom Knight visit the school. He was delightful and very talented. I especially like the “Garbage Monster” song and this one on the solar system. Tom wrote the songs, made up the stories, and created the puppets.

Great things are happening and I mean great! The children have embraced their own personal goals and love to have a chance to work on them. The boy who wants to tie his shoes is almost there. Then he will earn the title “expert.” He seems a bit surprised by his own progress. We are fortunate that the school’s occupational therapist was in this week and she instructed him on the final piece of the backwards learning. He is very proud. It will take lots more practice before he really has the hang of it.

We have until Feb. 26th, the date I chose as the first celebration point. That is when we will think about new goals or revising the ones they have now. We plan to have a goal party with a title yet to be chosen. Any ideas? They are getting excited already. I am meeting with each student weekly to give them some personal coaching and a planned opportunity to specifically work on their own goals.

Several children created literacy goals and they want to practice at home. Since you don’t have leveled readers on hand, please give the children some time on the computer at Symbaloo. Many children say they cannot use the computer at home. This is disheartening. I think if you try some of the tools out yourself, you will see their instructional merit. Sure, some of them seem like fluff but they were excellent practice as we learned to use the laptops in the early days.

This week, we explored a tile with simple texts. Some of the texts have and ear symbol that the children click on to hear the words while they read along. Other texts do not but the children can click on individual words and check to see if they figured it out correctly or not. All of the children were deeply engaged with this learning activity. Please, give them a chance to work with it at home. The program is the 4th one down on the left of the Symbaloo page. It’s pinkish purple with the image of a book and the words, “Read Books.” The choice of books is “Fiction” and Non-Fiction” and the children pick the title to work with.

Inspiration For Goals

Published on January 22, 2013 in #30in30, Blogs I Follow and Literacy. 1 Comment

I’ve been thinking about, writing about, working on plans for goal setting with the children in kindergarten this week. The goals we wrote in college evolved something like this:

to teach something (what)
by way of some action (how)
so that (why)

Backward planning is the way of things today. Now we look at goals from the center of this diagram moving outward. The image comes from @SimonSinek and his blog Start With Why. He fueled me with inspiration for the coming work.

You can be inspired as well by checking out his TED Talk. I love a quote from the talk linked above. “Martin Luther King gave the I have a dream speech, not the I have a plan speech.”

Let’s look at how we can drill down a goal, working backwards while focusing on the child’s dream. In order to be driven by inspiration, the talk about goals has to pique their passions, their own individual passions. Please keep in mind that I am still finessing what this work will look like.

I want to be a successful learner so that I can make a difference.
I want to learn strategies to read well – so that I can make a difference.
I want to learn to read – so that I can make a difference.
I want to know all my letters and sounds – so that I can make a difference.
I want to hear the sounds in words – so that I can make a difference.

Parents and teachers – raise your hands if you want to support the children as they work toward their own goals. Thought so.

Another #30in30 post.

Peace In Kindergarten

Published on January 21, 2013 in #30in30, Class Books and Literacy. 0 Comments

This weekend, school students around the country get an extra long weekend. It is hoped that we will reflect on the great American, Martin Luther King Jr. We learned about his contribution to society by talking about what he did to make things fair for people.

Fair is a word kindergarten children can relate to. They are not really interested in words like equality, civil rights, civil disobedience and the like. But fair, now that’s something important. We have even learned that sometimes things that are fair are not always equal. Some students get more of the teachers attention and time. Sometimes, younger siblings get their parents attention more than older kids.

What they quickly connected with was that children should not be kept away from other kids because of the color of their skin. That includes going to the same school, playing on the same playground, getting a fair turn to be the leader, join the same scout troop, and eat or drink together in the cafeteria.

When the idea was presented to the children, the idea that there was a time when these things didn’t happen, well frankly, they were bewildered. They looked at me like I had grown a second head.

While it is always important to teach our history, sometimes, the proof of our progress as a civilization, is in the bewildered expression on a five year old’s face.

We are a Peace Builder school, so we combined this program with our learning about Martin Luther King and created this class book. I have been using the free Picasa3 movie making tools of late, for presenting image files. Those files are uploaded to YouTube and then over to SafeShare.tv. Both versions below are best viewed full screen.

Here is the SafeShare.tv link.

and the YouTube version.

This makes post number 27 in my personal #30in30 challenge with 10 days left in the month. This goal has been a challenge for me but once again, I have learned so very much about myself and my teaching.

Newsletter January 11, 2013

Published on January 11, 2013 in #30in30, Literacy and Newsletters. 0 Comments

This week everyone learned to read!

I promised the children last week that we would be

learning to read this week and we did it. Hooray!

It’s almost magical! I had great confidence about this and I was excited. You see, I understand that you can put a level A book in front of a child and after 10-15 minutes of background and instruction on how we read in school, we were good to go. No, not every child remembered the line that’s mostly repeated from page to page, but they did a fine job.

You see, reading can just happen but teaching a child to read fluently with excellent comprehension takes practice and direct instruction.

For now, I am satisfied that the class knows the front cover, back cover, and title page. For years to come, they will hear their teachers prompt them with “Does it look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense?” There are many lessons ahead of us but for now the guided reading instruction will be on using illustrations to check for meaning, looking at problem words for letters and word family hints, and listening to the sound of the sentence so it is structurally correct as well.

Here are some pictures from Choice time this week.