First Week Fun

We made it through the first 4 days of Kindergarten!!   The children are doing well learning the morning routines and are doing them on their own now (with some reminders).  We also practiced walking outside for a fire drill and they did well following directions and staying in a quiet line. 

All of the children seem to be adjusting well to coming to school whether on the bus or being dropped off.  We began the regular morning routine with the first and second graders this morning.  The kindergarteners waited in the gym before heading down to the classroom.  They did a fabulous job this morning and are excited to wait in the gym each morning with the big kids.  They are also doing a great job getting ready for dismissal at the end of the school day.  I am gradually trying to let them be more independent with placing papers in the pockets of their folders and packing their backpacks on their own.

We have been busy learning each other’s names, practicing our cutting and gluing skills, becoming familiar with the daily routines, and learning the expectations of school behavior.  We have also been learning the terms before, after, same, and different in math.

I have been encouraging the children to go home each day and share one thing they have learned.  If your child has not shared what we have been doing, here are a few suggestions of what you can ask them about:

• What does a 5 star listener look like? (I am looking for children sitting with legs crossed, hands still and in their laps, ears listening, eyes watching the speaker, and lips that are zipped) 
• Can you show me how you write the numbers one and two? 
• Who were the characters? or What was your favorite part of the books The Kissing Hand, Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten, and The Wheels on the Bus? (The underlined titles take you to read alouds of the stories).

The students were super excited on the second day of school during a Scavenger Hunt to try to find the raccoon, Chester, from the book The Kissing Hand who left us clues to tour the different rooms in the school.  He was one quick raccoon and hopped back in the book before we could find him.  On our travels, however, we did get to meet our principal, nurse, and school secretary, as well as visit the library, art, music, gym, and computer rooms.  We visited the cafeteria staff again and went to the nurse's office to learn where to go if we need a band-aid or ice pack from Mrs. Marshall.  Everyone was relieved to hear that she doesn't give shots!

Smiles to end the first day!
Can your child name some of his/her new classmates?

Check out this Animoto video of some pictures I was able to take during our first week adventures!


I'm looking forward to our first full week next week.  We are going to continue learning each other's names, writing and counting the letters in our names, and develop an understanding of expected and unexpected school behavior so that we can create our classroom rules together.

Sizzling Summer Fun

Hello my former students!  I hope you have had a fabulous summer filled with adventure and fun!  It's hard to believe a week from now you will have already had your first couple days of the new school year.  In June, you told me of your exciting plans to camp, travel, visit family, and hang out with friends.  I would love to hear from you! What is something exciting you did this summer?
Also, hello to my new Kindergarteners!  Welcome to Fuller Meadow!  I am excited to be starting the school year with you.  Feel free to share about your vacation as well to help me get to know you. :)

We Are Bat Experts!

The students enjoyed learning about bats during our science lessons and reader's workshop.  We used bats to practice identifying main idea and detail and to learn about nonfiction text features.  I am impressed that the children learned so many interesting facts about this intriguing mammal!    The children have learned how to use many ipad apps this year to share their knowledge and to express their thinking.  These apps include Explain Everything, Recap, Seesaw, Pic Collage, and iMovie.  Pretty impressive!  What is even more impressive is how they rose to the challenge of sharing what they learned about bats in an app of their choosing. I love how when I set high expectations, my students often surpass how I envision the final products will be.  This project was one of those times! After creating their own nonfiction bat books with Miss Teixeira, they brainstormed all the facts they learned and we added them to the KWL chart.

Normally, the class and I work together to create a single bat movie.  This year, with our expansive knowledge of open-ended apps, I proposed a challenge for a culminating activity.  Students were very excited to learn that they could choose their partner, determine which facts they felt were important to highlight in their project, and then do some research on their own.  I wish I could share the pure excitement that fell over the room as the class got right to work collaborating with their peers.   After a little bit of time researching with their partners, we came back together as a group to decide some key science words and some topics that would be beneficial in helping everyone organize their information.  

Then, after a little more research...

...the students were ready to produce their final product.  I showed them some examples of how to organize and categorize information in some videos and collages I had created, which got them even more eager to start.
Mrs. Baker came into our room to help with production.  Many students took the knowledge they had learned about certain apps from the guided practice we had done throughout the year and got right to work independently.  Mrs. Baker, Miss Teixeira, and I were all extremely impressed and proud of the leadership, collaboration, creativity, decision making, and problem solving we saw occurring while groups worked pretty quietly around the room.  Kids were respectfully discussing the order of pictures (such as using the life cycle - from baby bat, to growing and eating, to adult bat) to grouping facts into categories.  I was a very proud, happy teacher, especially knowing I was doing all of this with Kindergarteners!
I took the list of ways we discussed organizing the information and created folders with Google images in our class Google Drive account, so that students did not have to search the internet and could work responsibly in a controlled internet environment. 

 I admit, I was a little nervous how production would go as this was the first time I introduced how to find and download pictures in Google Drive, which was silly because these students were observant listeners during the instructions!

Without further ado, I present our bat movies.  Children choose to complete this project with the app Explain Everything or iMovie.  Their favorite part was being able to take pictures of each other, import them into Explain Everything, crop themselves, and then add themselves to a bat picture.  Their creativity will make you smile!
 
I am so glad I gave this project a try!  Fantastic job, boys and girls! Thank you, Mrs. Baker, for all your help and support!  We love having you come in to work with us!
Common Core State Standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.K.2

Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative/explanatory texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.K.6

With guidance and support from adults, explore a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.K.7

Participate in shared research and writing projects (e.g., explore a number of books by a favorite author and express opinions about them).

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.K.8

With guidance and support from adults, recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.

Field Day

The children had a spectacular time at Field Day last Friday!  Thank you to all the parents who were able to help out with this exciting event!

Ms. Gibeau and Ms. DeSanctis took some amazing pictures and shared them with me.  I created an Animoto video with their pictures below.  Thank you both!

10 Star Thursday

During the month of May, my class earned 10 whole class clip ups!  They are pretty amazing, right?!  I knew I had to plan an extra special day to show the kids how proud I was.  We had to wait until last Thursday for a warm, sunny day to be outside. 
We started the morning off by putting the fun in Fundations.  The kids were eager to put their learned knowledge of trick words and digraphs to the test in the activities below. First, a digraph sort.  Children had to read a word with a digraph that was taped to a beanbag, then try to toss it into the hoop with the matching digraph. 

Next up, soccer skills came in handy as students had to dribble the ball around cones that had trick words taped to them.  They had to read the word as they kicked the ball around the cone.  

Lastly, we had sight word Zingo and digraph word Jenga.   

Our Masco Intern, Miss Shan, stopped by for a surprise visit!

And that was only FUNdations!
After rehearsing for our Kindergarten Serenade, I told the kids I was going to change their names for the day.  Instead of having a Bella, Cameron, and Amund in my class, I had a Miss Go, a Mr. With, and a Mr. That and I was Mrs. Because.   Then we had a special visitor who wanted to join in on the fun and changed her name to Dr. Little... It was Dr. Carreiro!

She introduced our class to Breakout Edu where children work as a team to solve clues to unlock a box with LOTS of locks!

We were so occupied with this engaging activity, I only had time to take these pictures of my team.  Be sure to check out Dr. Carreiro's blog post for more pictures of both teams! I loved seeing the teamwork and perseverance.  It was so interesting to see students' leadership and organizational skills as well as their praise and encouragement as they talked through the clues.

 

I just love these kids!  They make me smile each day!  

  Great job, girls and boys!  I hope you had fun!

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.3

Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.3.c

Read common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does).

 

Happy Graduation, Miss Teixeira!

Miss T graduated from Merrimack College last Friday night.  She now has her Master's in Education!  We are lucky that Miss T will continue to be working with us until the last day of school.
Mrs. Lisitano, our room parent, was so thoughtful to reach out to me with the request to do something special to honor Miss Teixeira's hard work both at Merrimack and in our classroom.  This was a great idea and the students were excited to make cards and a heartfelt video for Miss T.
The children were thrilled to celebrate with delicious cupcakes from Tara Leigh Cakes and to have a dance party to the song "Celebration".  They did a wonderful job keeping the party a surprise!  Thank you to Mrs. Lisitano and Mrs. Dalton for organizing this special event and the gifts from the class.

As happy as I am for Miss Teixeira, I am sad our year together is coming to an end.  She is a very creative, supportive, reflective, and hard working educator who is eager to learn and teach.  Dr. Carreiro was right last June when she met with Miss T for the first time and said she had the perfect fit in mind for her placement this year.  Thank you, Miss Teixeira, for coming to school each day with a smile and eagerness to make each student's day their best day yet and for always making learning fun!  I have enjoyed working with you and thank you for helping me grow as an educator.  You are going to be a stellar teacher!

Welcome, Miss Shannon!

Please help me welcome Shannon Decker to our classroom.  She is a Masco senior who will be helping out in our class until the end of May.  The students enjoy working with her and she is getting a lot of valuable experience before heading off to college to study education.  We are lucky to have her!