A March Update

The children and I have been very busy this month learning new skills!

Reader's Workshop

In reader's workshop, we've been focusing our attention on books that have a predictable structure- pattern books.  During this unit, we've been noticing different types of patterns that books can have.  Some of those patterns include the following: a repeating pattern, a growing (or shrinking) pattern, a question and answer pattern, or our schema to make predictions of what would come next.  The children easily picked up on the different types of patterns and could point out the patterns they saw in their own books.  Our next unit will focus on the importance of getting ready to read prior to actually reading along with the importance of rereading sentences. 

Writer's Workshop

In writer's workshop, we had started learning about procedural writing (how-to writing).  This type of writing allows the children to be teachers and teach someone how to do something.  For example: How to make a peanut and butter sandwich.  The children have also learned how to label their steps by either using numbers or using the transitional words of first, next, then,  and last.

Fundations

In Fundations, the children have been working hard tapping out and spelling CVC words (example: cat) and reading sentences in phrases.  Just this week, the digraphs (sh, ch, th, wh, ck) were introduced to the children.  We will now begin tapping and spelling words that include these digraphs.  The children were also introduced last week to a spelling rule when spelling words with the letter c or the letter k.  If the vowel in a CVC word is a, o, or u, the word begins with the letter c.  If the vowel is e or i, the word begins with the letter k.

Math

In math, we've been working on building our fluency with adding and subtracting within 5.  The children have also been working on using different counting strategy's when counting objects in 10 Frames.  As you can see by this public record, which was created during a math lesson, there were 3 different ways I heard the children count the shark ten frames.

We've also been solving word problems that have us representing our thinking through pictures and numbers.  Next week, the children will create their own word problems using sea creatures as their props.

 









This month's calendar pattern is an ABBA pattern, which has us using cats and dogs.  In Our Month in School chart, dogs and cats are used as a springboard for a probability experiment. The children were shown a dog and cat spinner and shared their observations. It was very obvious that the cat had more room on the spinner than the dog. The children helped color dog and cat cards to be used in the chart. Each day, we spin the spinner to see if we are going to add either a dog or a cat to the chart depending on where the arrow landed. We will be using this data to write addition sentences to reflect the number of dogs and cats on the chart from time to time as well.