A Short But Busy Week In Room 103! 

Following our long Thanksgiving Weekend, we got back to work!!! And for kindergarten, work=play! Lego, blocks, gears, train tracks, letter construction, cutting, writing, painting, drawing, dinosaurs ... Add to that, fire drills and pizza lunch and we had a perfect week!

Our Classroom Educational Assistants

We are lucky to have support from two amazing educational assistants in our classroom:Mrs. Straka joins us each morning and Mrs. Bucik joins us each afternoon.

Morning Meeting

Each day, following outdoor play, we have a morning meeting at the carpet. The children have assigned carpet spots and the student of the day leads the meeting with the assistance of the teacher.

We sing O Canada and pray (God made the sunshine ...). We then read the morning message. The student of the day is asked to point to each word of the message and read along. Here is a sample message:

Friday, October 13, 2017

Good morning friends!

Today is _______________________. We have pizza day today!  

Let's play with 1 new friend today and remember to show God's love.

Love,

Miss Coulson,

Mrs. Cuggy-Murphy and

Mrs. Straka

The student of the day is given the job of identifying  the day and then writes the day's name, sounding out letters. The message then provides with our class with an opportunity  to develop literacy and numeracy skills. For example we will find and circle all the letter Os in the message and then count them together. The student of the day will practice writing numbers. Following this 10 minute morning meeting our students have a chance to choose play-based table top activities!

Thank You God!

Reflecting on our Thanksgiving holiday, students had an opportunity to think about what they were most thankful for and draw pictures of these special reflective stories. The teachers scribe JKs' stories and encourage SKs to write their stories independently. Here are just some of their reflections:

Thank you for the flowers and the grass and crowns. - Aaniyah

Thank you for the sky, love, an iPad, grass. food, the sun, flowers, my dog, craters from the moon, 

Earth, the planets, Mercury. Olivia

Thank you for ninjas. Thank you for Pokémon. - Leticia

Thank you for the sea monsters that are on the T.V. -Audrey

Reading Connections

One of the most important gifts we can give a child is the love of reading. In Room 103, books are treasures and we encourage our children to treat all books with great care!

Each day after lunch, we have story time. A story is read aloud and children have a chance to make a meaningful connection to the story. The most basic response to a book is "Did you like it/dislike it and why".  We ask children to give a thumbs up or thumbs down and then to tell us what they thought with the prompt, "I liked it because..."

We can make deeper connections to a book. When making a text-to-self connection, children relate the story of their own lives and experiences. They are encouraged to respond with "This reminds me of when I..." In Jamie Lee Curtis' books, Today I Feel Silly and I'm Gonna Like Me, the stories end with questions explicitly inviting children to make a text-to-self connection, "How do you feel today?" and "But enough about me-How about YOU?"

Other stories lend themselves to other connections, text-to-text, text-to-world and text-to-faith. Text-to-text connections help students relate a story to other stories in various media forms (nursery rhymes, stories, movies, television shows) while text-to-world and text-to-faith relate stories to bigger world and spiritual issues.

When reading with your child at home, please take time to invite your child to connect to a book by talking about their response and experiences!

Classroom Read-Alouds (October 10-13)

I Am A Leaf, Jean Marzollo

Leaves, David Ezra Stein

Not a Stick, Antoinette Portis

Today I Feel Silly & Other Moods That Make My Day, Jamie Lee Curtis

I'm Gonna Like Me Letting Off a Little Self-Esteem, Jamie Lee Curtis