Monday, September 15, 2014

Letter C Book

Today I introduced a new and highly effective language program that will be added to our daily curriculum. For the next two weeks we will focus on the letter C. Each child is provided with the book shown below that they will use throughout the two weeks and will be able to take home at the end! This program is published by McGraw Hill Education.

Today our focus was on forming circles and describing objects with the circular form as round. To start I had a display of objects that I found were round. Once we discussed each object, it was the students turn to find objects around the room that were round and describe what they found in complete sentences. Some objects our students chose were a clock, the fan, paper towel roll, a cup, etc.

Then we took a look at the first two pages of our book that was based on a circus theme. We discussed the different sizes of circles on the circus page. We also discussed and watched videos of circuses. Students were amazed at all the animals and people doing tricks!

Afterwards we practiced making circles in a very specific way. This is the stepping stone to how they will write the letter C. 





This resource worked perfectly for this assignment of making circles! You can purchase the book below on Amazon. 


A poem we sang about the different aspects of a circus! 


In the activity below we focused on our listening skills. We discussed what sounds we hear daily and if those sounds were loud or soft. Students came up with a huge list of the different sounds they hear and enjoyed mocking those sounds. After our discussion students completed three activities. In the first activity students had to identify and circle which sound they heard. The second activity students classified using a graph which images were loud and soft. Once they completed the graph I asked multiple questions like, "Were there more loud or soft sounds?", etc. For the last activity we played "Simon Says!" Students had so much fun playing this game. :)




Today we focused on prepositions. I have had so much fun teaching this topic in the past and today was no exception. To begin I asked a student to sit in a chair in the front of the class and handed them a book. I asked them, "Can you put the book above your head? Can you put the book on your lap? Can you put the book under you chair?" Students had so much fun showing off their listening skills in front of their peers. We then discussed what words I used in order for them to know where to put the book... they're prepositional words! 

Afterwards we listened to a very catchy prepositional song, completed another activity using three colored cups and three activity sheets.

I placed these three colored cups in a specific order and asked students, "Which color cup is below the red?" and other similar questions. We then moved on to discussing that these colors, and in this order like displayed in the picture below, resemble a traffic light. It brought up another really neat discussion of what each color means and what to do when each of the colors is shining.  







Below students practiced creating circles and coloring them like a traffic light.



Below we used prepositional words to describe where each colored balloon was in relation to the bear. 



For the activity below students had to listen to very specific instructions in order to complete this worksheet accurately. For example I instructed them to trace each circle, color each circle, cut each circle, place the red circle above the bears head, etc. All of our children did such a great job following instructions. I was very proud of them! 






Always Crafting!

Whether it's being creative in the classroom or home, I enjoy every moment of it!

One of my favorite activities to do in my spare time is craft! I haven't had much time lately, but this weekend I was determined to do so! Maybe a little too determined because I went from painting one piece of furniture to four pieces of furniture this color... :) 

Before and After 





Friday, September 5, 2014

Fall Reading and Math!

Our class has worked extremely hard all summer to master recognizing letters and their sounds. Once I felt our students mastered this skill we moved to the next step in becoming a successful reader! That step is to work on recognizing letter blends (th, ch, sh, etc.) and word families (-at, -an, etc.). Below you will see students completing several different types of activities focusing on letter blends and word families!

One really fun way to work on word families is working with rhyming words! I really like this resource because it provides students with the spelled word as well as the picture. 











Another great (and free) resource to use when teaching word families is Starfall. The site is full of interactive activities and stories that improves phonemic awareness. In the activity below, students match the beginning sound to the word by looking at the picture and listening to the word being said. Once they finish matching the beginning letter sound of words they are rewarded with reading a short animated story including words that they practiced! I really like how the site highlights each word of the story so students can begin recognizing words by sight. 



Below is another Starfall activity that is for a student who is ready to read. The site offers several different types of genres for children to pick from. 






We also worked on our number sequence, addition, subtraction and fact families!






I love using these "Differentiated Instruction Cubes" for math and language lessons. These cubes give you the freedom to insert whatever you want into each side. One student used them by rolling two dice, add the numbers together and color the number it equaled to. Another students used them by rolling one die and coloring the number is equaled to.















We practiced adding...

 



I love using songs to teach skip counting. We listened to these songs before and while we completed our skip counting by 2 and 5 activity.

Skip Counting by 2 Video

Skip Counting by 5 Video








We worked on understanding place value of numbers using base ten blocks...


I was very pleased with how well our students understand and mastered graphing data. When I gave my students this assignment I started to explain how to complete it, but I was quickly interrupted with students telling me, "teacher I know how to do this." I was very happy they wanted to get right to work and enjoyed this math activity! :)