Happy Monday!

Today we practiced finding the parts of a book. Your child should know how to find the front and back cover, author/illustrator, title page, words and pictures! 

He are some friends very busy reading. Today we got up to 4 minutes without breaking the stamina....or reading independently! 

Myah is showing us the answer to her math problem. Today's problem was awesome. It was: Draw a cat, a fish and a dog. Which one is different? Why? Many of them came up with some very unique ideas.....proving that mathematicians solve problems differently.
Examples I saw:
A fish is different because it has fins
A fish is different because it swims underwater
A fish is different because it doesn't make noise
A dog is different, because if you put cat and fish together, you get catfish! 

Fantastic Friday!

The weeks are flying by.  It is wonderful to see the students grow every day.

We finished up the week reading the sentence, "Can you see green snakes?"  We used picture clues to help us read as well as sounding out letters.

Sometimes we just need some quiet time.

As writers, we are working at stretching out our sounds as well as using words around us to help us. Ally was able to find the word "see" as well as write some letters.

Wait until you see what we can do in the coming days!

Mrs. Vollan

Krystine Vollan-Reavis

Happy Thursday!!

Today Mrs. Cota was out sick so Mrs. Vollan was with K02.  The baby is not here yet so please feel free to email both of us, if you need to do so, so all messages are received.

In Math today we wrote our names and counted how many letters there were.

We also worked on looking for the number in the room if we couldn't remember how to write it.

We are becoming great writers.  We learned that spelling can be hard.  But if we sound it out, we can come close so others know what we are trying to say.

Myah was working on writing monkey bars.  She is thinking very hard on what sounds each letter makes.

Dallas was so proud of how he spelled "person."

Mrs. Vollan

Krystine Vollan-Reavis

Happy Wednesday!

This is our How Did You Do It wall for math strategies. Each day, we have a math problem that our kiddos have to solve. Today's problem was: How many kids are at your table? How can you show your answer. We work for a bit and then share our work. The kids discuss whether or not what a friend tried made sense. You can notice that our friend Aker is our FIRST friend to have a strategy on the wall.
When she wrote her answer, she wrote the number and circled it!
I saw many friends try this today! 

Our first reading strategy (what good readers do) is to recognize or read, sight words.
We call them snap words because you have to read them in a snap! Please visit our shutterfly page for the first 20 words and practice them at home. 

We also have a goal of learning our letters and sounds by Halloween! Please practice this at home too.

Today we talked about Reader Respect. These are the things we do when we read to self.

Here are some friends reading the survey. See how Autumn points to the words as she reads? Try this at home! 

We went for two minutes without 'breaking stamina.' We have to read quietly, stay in one spot, get started right away and work the whole time or stamina is broken! We are learning to be independent.

Couldn't resist a picture of these cuties who built a HUGE ship during choicetime. They were so proud :) 

Happy Tuesday!

Welcome back from Labor Day weekend! I can tell we all needed a nice, long weekend to relax and unwind. It sure felt good! 

This is so exciting! We practiced our first read to self round today. Each child has his or her own book bag that has 3 books I've pre-selected. Eventually, students will be tested and taught to book shop for 'just right books.' It's more fun to read when you can pick out your own book! They did a great job. Just look at these readers.

We'll continue to read each day and build our stamina. We are developing an I chart together to help us remember what we are expected to do during this time. I hope to see them reach 20 minutes in the next couple of months! Then we start introducing more choices and that's why this time is called Daily 5. There will eventually be 5 literacy based choices. Some days I'll pick where they need to work and other days they get to pick.

We just started our first newsbook today! Very exciting! Each Monday (or Tuesday after a break) we will share what we did with our new elbow partners. Then elbow partners share out what their partner said and this helps us work on listening to each other. Today I picked Ally's share about Wild Water West!!!

Amare showed us how he reads the pictures today. We'll be having more in depth lessons about how to read a book soon. What a brave kiddo! Just like Eric Carle!