Rainbow Fish Day!

Today we are in Day 4 of my first ventures into KinderLiteracy by Tara West and I have loved it! I wanted to share some of the elements we have done in class and how successful they have been. Thanks Tara! Today we focused on characters in our story Rainbow Fish. We read the book again, which they love and then pulled out each of the characters we met.

Next the students got to pick 2 of their favorite characters to draw on their response sheets. I have loved the connections this curriculum makes with each of my kiddos. There is writing, drawing, discussion, partner sharings, literacy skill instruction, and so much more!

Next my kiddos got to practice their first text to self connection! We talked about what Rainbow Fish learned from the story and my kiddos eagerly shared that he learned to share. We reviewed what sharing looked like in the story and then told them to close their eyes and think of a time that they shared with someone they know. Here's how it all turned out! My Kindercubs did a great job!

I have to say that I am falling in love with the KinderLiteracy set Tara created. I strive to be an amazing and creative teacher like she is. Here is a link to her program if you are interested!

Happy Thursday everyone!

Welcome to our my class and teacher blog. Well, this has been a huge year for us. My husband was accepted to UNC Chapel Hill to complete his doctorate in rhetoric and communications and so the rush began to pack up our lives in Kentucky and move south to North Carolina! After a hectic but exciting couple of months, we moved to Chapel Hill into a new housing complex called Briar Chapel. It is a wonderful community. Within days, we had made close connections and friendships to our neighbors.

What about my teaching? I was blessed to receive an offer at my dream job at Woods Charter School. I made a few tours of the local elementaries when we were house hunting and I knew from the moment I stepped in that Woods was where I wanted to be.

Happy Friday

      Happy Friday everyone! Well this has been one busy week! Here's a snapshot of our week. We have been busy learning the bossy e rule this week and the kids did a great job! They really enjoyed taking turns being bossy e and telling the other vowel to say his name instead of his short sound...maybe a little bit too much fun! :)

     We finished up our plant unit and will continue to watch our little marigold sproutlings grow into our secret Mother's Day presents. ;) We ordered our caterpillars last week and they arrived first thing Monday morning. The kids were ecstatic! They have been growing fast, so we talked about the different kinds of caterpillars and what they eat today. Next we will work on their life cycle.

In math we have been practicing greater than and less than and I got to get out my alligators, which is one of my favorite lessons. I love Pinterest!

 

      We also learned how to play war and the kids could not get enough of it! It's my secret weapon to subitizing! :) I use dot cards made from index cards instead of number or playing cards and they get really quick!

      This Thursday my team went to CCESC for training on the new KRA or Kinderness Readiness Assessment. It was great to see the Monroe Elementary Kinder team and get to explore this new test. I appreciated that Ohio was also seeing the dip in our student's entry skills and it was great to get some tools to help adapt our curriculum to help those students catch up and excel throughout the year!

The new term of the day was Executive Function. It was a very interesting term to get to delve into. Here essentially what it is. It controls our ability to:

• Manage the expression of feelings, thoughts, impulses, and behaviors. 
• Demonstrate the ability to persist with a task. 
• Demonstrate the ability to retain and apply information. 
• Demonstrate the ability to solve a problem. 
• Seek and gather new information to plan for projects and activities. 

      Demonstrate cooperative behavior in interactions with others. The lack of maturation of this skill is a major cause of the decline that we have all seen. So we learned a lot about this function and then talked about come of the ways we can monitor and develop this function in Kindergarten. I finally felt like I had a leg up on this decline and how I could further develop it in my classroom and answer many parent questions about how they could help as well. :) Here is a quick video talking about how the brain science behind these studies in early childhood experiences works. I really enjoyed it and wanted to pass it along.
      We have all been sworn to secrecy on the content of the test, but I can tell you that I am very excited to implement it in my room to help me not only score my kids on their development but also monitor and then adapt my curriculum to best help them grow and succeed daily! Have a great weekend! 

Hello! This is a test for the new font. :)