What a great week we've had! Even though it was short, it was definiltey busy. The kids have their routine and schedule down to a science by now but we've made a few minor tweaks to the schedule over the past few weeks. Sometimes it takes some time to figure how everything is going to flow but we've finally figured it out!
This week was full of introductions to new things. First, we gained new members to our classroom family...our fuzzy little gerbils! My mom came by the classroom on Tuesday afternoon to deliver them to us, complete with their cage and a supply of bedding and food to get us started. To say the kids were excited is an understatement. We spent most of that time looking at them and asking her tons of questions. We got a basic run down of how often to feed them and how to change their bedding. She didn't know everything but definitely more than we did at the time. I told her to check in with us in a couple of weeks and we will be educating her :) I say this because we have officially started an exploration on gerbils. The kids had so many questions that I didn't have answers to, and were so curious about the new pets that we all decided we should do some research and become gerbil experts!
Our first phase of exploration came from our KWL chart. For each new exploration we work on this year we will make one of these charts. A KWL chart is a list of things that we, K (already know about the subject), W (want to learn more about/questions), and L (what we've learned). Right now we have the K (know) and W (want to learn) sections full. We actually had so many questions that we had to make our chart fairly long! You can check it out on the wall in our reading center. At the end of our exploration we will return to the chart and list all the things we have learned. It's a great way for us to get an idea of what the kids would like to know more about and to show all we've learned!
Our next phase in exploration came from a collection of gerbil books from the public library. We spent one morning in reading workshop looking through the books. We encouraged the kids to get with a reading buddy and simply do a picture walk - flip through the book and look at the pictures together. After they spent some time talking and picture walking we asked if anyone had already learned something new just from paying attention to the pictures. We found that all of us had a new fact to share and most of us had some more questions. We also talked about the difference between fiction and non-fiction. We discovered that reading our gerbil fiction books gave us some great stories and that our non-fiction books about gerbils presented us with some great facts! We will be leaving the books out on our reading center bookshelf for the duration of our exploration. We have also spent some time in writers workshop drawing and writing about gerbils. Some chose to tell a story they created while others chose to state some new facts that they learned. These journal works will be hanging up in the hallway, so stop by and check out all we've been learning!
At the moment we are predicting that our exploration will wrap up after next week but we haven't set a deadline. We want to follow the lead of the kids when it comes to our explorations throughout the year. If they feel that they've had all their questions answered, then we move on to something new. If they feel they have more questions they need answered, then we keep going. Through each of our explorations we will constantly be meeting language, math, science, and emotional/social standards. It's amazing how these things work hand in hand and always fall into place!
Another thing we introduced this week was Math Buddies. Once a week each child will be paired up with one of Rabbi Meir's college students to work on math concepts. This week they met their math buddy for the first time and spent some time with them outside playing games based on basic math concepts. The kids had so much to say when they got back to the room! I'm so thankful that we get to participate in this each week. What a wonderful opportunity for the kids! These math sessions will happen along with our math workshops throughout the week. This week we introduced the kids to math bingo. It was a huge hit! I'm predicting it will be requested each time we gather for math workshop. Right now we have it geared towards number recognition but, like all our workshops, we will be changing concepts as the kids continue to grow and master new skills.
Here is our list of several standards we worked on this week:
Approaches to Learning:
- Demonstrate delight or satisfaction when completeing a task, solving a problem, or making a discovery.
- Show ability to focus attention for increasing variety of chosen tasks and activities for short periods of time (10-20 minutes).
- Understand a task can be accomplished through several steps.
Social & Emotional:
- Demonstrate confidence by participating in most classroom activities.
- Manage transitions positiviely when told what to expect.
- Display emerging social skills of trying to take turns and talk with others duriing play.
Language and Literacy:
- Recall some details in stories read aloud.
- Explore books independently.
- Show interest in informational texts about familiary objects.
- Relate information from texts to personal experience.
Mathematics:
- Generate conjectures based on personal experiences and simple reasoning.
- Locate patterns in the environment.
- Count orally forward to twenty and backward from three.
I'm really excited to see where the kids take their curiosity of the gerbils. I'm guessing you'll be hearing a lot about it at home as well :) Here's a glimpse into our classroom this week...enjoy!
We are researchers...hard at work!
BINGO!
No comments:
Post a Comment