Five for Friday November 4, 2016

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Thank you Kasey at Doodle Bugs for linky party this week.
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My colleague Pam Cochran has shared a 'lesson' on coloring that she did with her kindergarteners.  

We have found that they need specific of guidance and a rubric to understand what they should be striving to do.
 We put this on a large chart tablet so they can refer to it while they work.

The more they practice RIGHT, the better they will get.


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 It is still pumpkin harvest time these first early days of November.  

The students traced or wrote their numbers in the pumpkins. (Differentiated lesson) 
Then they learned a partner game.  One player rolls a die and counts out the number of counters (Pumpkin erasers, candy corn or uses a bingo dobber) to cover the pumpkins in number order.  The game ends when the first player to cover-up all their numbers.
We knew these needed lots of review this week as they worked out their sugar highs from Halloween Monday.   

  

More review of matching letters.  I selected the letters that were most missed when checking letter recognition.  Students remove a letter from the pumpkin on the left and matched it to their paper.  Students could also trace the letter with a marker or use a bingo dobber.  Then place the plastic letter in the bowl on the right.  (Reinforcing the left to right habit.)

The next step is writing letter pairs and saying the letter name while they are writing.  
We have found that repetitive writing of the letter pairs whether in alphabetical order and/or as shown above, helps the students learn the letters and sticks in their memory.  It has also greatly improved their ability to write the letters.


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For the past few years, I have asked the children to bring in their candy wrappers and we have sorted and graphed the various kinds.
Thanks to Dr. Jean to remind and extend this to more sorting.  It inspired me to write up a list of activities.
The day after Halloween I sent home a note in a baggie requesting empty candy wrappers.  I specifically asked them to cut the end rather than tear it.  They need MORE cutting practice anyway.

They sorted the wrappers.  I found a bit more control sending one row (table, group) at a time prevented a chaotic scramble.

I taped 26 pages on the chalkboard and labeled with the alphabet.  Students took turns getting a wrapper and finding the page to tape their wrapper on.  It was clear who could and could not identify the beginning letter of the words.

The next activity was to make SETS of candy wrappers.  Again, row by row, (table or group of 5 at a time) picked up a wrapper and decided where they were adding theirs.  As each group came, it was becoming more challenging to make sure not "too many" or "not enough" on each set page. I was excited when the students used the math vocabulary words we've identified as they described each page during our conclusion.


Woohoo....CUBS win............by the way!