Happy Monday!

Here are some shots from our writing workshop...we have a lot of ground to cover...but, overall, the kids are starting to move along. Now, I need to get them to...

*Make sure they're writing about real life (their life)
*Writing more than 1 sentence

*Adding spaces between words and being neat, neat, neat
*Handwriting 

 Cade wrote the word snowboarding! He even knew it had a chunk in it (ing) and used the chunk poster!!!

We are continuing our study of fairy tales....while hoping the giant doesn't crawl all of the way into our classroom! Agh!!! :) :)
Fairy tales are great stories to use to practice retelling while naming the setting and characters.

There is still a lot of confusion with Daily 5. Right now, I am trying to re-teach that there are 3 ways to read a book....here are some friends practicing reading the pictures in wordless books. This skill is important when students are reading big, hefty picture books.
We also practice reading the words in our just right guided reading books. 

Today, for math, we got out our 5 frames and practiced making combinations of 5.
Did you know that this is a skill K students must have mastered?
So you should be able to ask your child, "What goes with 2 to make 5?" 

Happy Thursday!

We had a very BUSY day! It was full of learning and fun :) Goodness! Missing a day of school really affected our plans! Here is Davin helping us to write a morning sentence. It is very important that we know the difference between a sentence, a word and a letter. This is still developing in some students. Please encourage this by framing or putting your fingers around these things in books at home :) 

Shaylee helped us find the 'oo' chunk in the word school. YAY!!! We have another chunk expert! 

I just ADORE Mo Willems. If you don't have his books in your home library...you SHOULD! :) Haha. They're amazing and full of snap words for kids. They are super funny and have a lot of things, like bold words, that help kids read with good expression. Today we read this pigeon book and noticed bold words and speech bubbles! I even had a writer try a speech bubble in her writing!

Here you can see Beau and Myah sharing their fabulous writing with us. Many of us are working on goals, such as....
Writing from left to right
Putting spaces between words

Writing about real life and not drawing pretty pictures

We are also learning not to fill up the pages with pictures or color over our words. I always tell them, "This makes it hard for the reader to read."

Taylor L. had a great risky word today! She wrote sport.

Happy Tuesday!

This morning we worked on reading the pictures. I have a lot of students who missed out on this early this year and aren't sure how to simply read the pictures. This is important....to develop story language and to be able to read when they're looking at picture books that are too hard.

Here is a new student in K02! His name is Davin. He moved here from Anchorage, Alaska and is SUPER DUPER sweet!!! 

Ok...so today I showed them hidden words in their names. We looked for words like I, do, or, and, a, etc. Now they're going crazy finding snap words--even in their coloring books! It's GREAT to see them so motivated! 

Happy Monday...even with a blizzard :)

We are really starting to improve our writing. We have a long way to go though! But just look at Jaymeson's risky word today: He likes the character from Big Hero 6 :)
We have to.....
*Write about real life
*Write more than 1 sentence
*Put spaces between words
*Use snap words to write simple sentences (for some students)
*Smaller pictures and more words

We learned a new chunk (ir/er/ur) and the sound it makes. Just look! Zander has --er in his name! 

We practiced a very fun play today to practice the -sh chunk. We even turned K02 into a movie theatre :) Just ask your kiddo about it! 

K02 has a new student. Meet Maddux! He is a SWEETIE :) 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Today we read a book by another favorite author mine...Mo Willems!!! These books are GREAT for beginning readers (a lot of snap words). Sheep the Sheep had a chunk in her name---sh. 

We also hang up this picture to remind us of the 'sh' chunk when we're reading and writing.

Look at Cade's story! He was writing about the Christmas party :) Way to add more details and smaller pictures Cade.