We have had a great first month in our class. Students are settling into routines and building friendships. Let us tell you a little about how we start our days. We start each day with ‘Inquiry Time’. During this time students are engaging in a variety of activities of their choice. We use this time for ‘work on writing’ as well as small group reading instruction. Our students make choices about where they want to engage in the classroom and then they select a writing format to share their thinking, creating and ideas.
It seems we have a class of architects and engineers as building and creating seems to be a favourite activity. Here are some of their creations:
We believe that you can use play and open exploration to engage students and we need to remember that in Grade 1 and 2 they are still kids and deserve time to explore ideas through play. Providing this time allows students to:
build social skills
build curiosity and learn to ask questions
learn to take responsibility for their learning
use creative thinking
express their ideas and knowledge in various ways (structures, loose part creations, writing, conversations, etc.)
build problem-solving skills
access various curriculum strands
work on learning skills
share explorations through various writing formats
Wow! We can't believe that a month has already gone by! What a busy and exciting month we've had. Our learners have been busy exploring our classroom environment, learning routines and expectations and having fun creating in the classroom. Here are some photos to share some of our learning from this past month.
Lots of literacy during September!
A goal of our first few months in Kindergarten is name writing. We provide many different opportunities for our learners to practice writing and reading their names.
Each of our learners create a letter using rocks. We took a photo of each letter they created to use for our writing centre.
Working on letter recognition and sorting.
A big focus of the Kindergarten program (and ours) is self-regulation. We have been working on various strategies to help us calm down and get our bodies ready for learning. 'Take 5 Breathing' has been a huge hit with our learners (and the staff) as a way to bring everyone to a place where we're ready to listen and learn. You can use 'Take 5 Breathing' at home. Try it out. You'll be surprised how much it helps you calm down and focus.
Some learners find they need movement breaks or a space to calm down. They have been using the yoga posters and yoga mats to do various calming poses.
Tree pose.
(Yoga even goes outside!)
We have been teaching 'Whole Body Listening'. Our learners have many times throughout the day where they need to be respectful listeners (not just for whole class meetings, but for all moments they are listening to someone else). Watch the video to see how you need to use 'whole body listening' to ensure you don't miss important information.
Our learners have been enjoying using art as a way to share their thinking and learning. We have provided opportunities for them to experiment with different writing utensils (crayons, markers, pencil crayons) as well as with paint.
'Loose Parts' is another way learners can share their thinking. You can find loose parts all around you. Look at what you can create with various materials.
Fine motor skills are important to support, as they lead to a successful pencil grip and writing skills. Our learners have enjoyed the various activities in the room.
As always, the building centre is a popular location for our architects! We have had roads, stages (with performing bands!), houses, sky scrapers, drums and so much more!
We 'Read to Self' everyday. Our learners use special 'reading glasses' and 'reading pointers' to help them focus on their books during our reading time. We are working on building up our stamina. Together we created our expectations during this time.
Can't wait to see all the great learning October will bring.
Our learners have been busy thinking and learning. We are so proud of them as they continue to amaze and inspire us. They work hard everyday and have demonstrated so much growth. Here is a snippet into thinking and learning in our room. (You will notice that math and literacy are integrated into everything we do.)
Measurement provocation
Lots of patterns of different lengths
Writing about their creations by tracing the shapes and then describing the shapes they used
Learning about 3D shapes
Finding words around the room and then finding the vowels in the words they wrote.
We love this vowel song!
This JK found the vowels in the alphabet cards and came to show us.
We love to play 'sentence detective' to determine which sentence is the correct one.
Brainstorming ways that we can be good friends
We are great writers!
Stretch break!
Representing 1-5 in different ways.
Creating growth patterns using buttons.
We love letter sound Bingo!
Writing math sentences and using fingers as manipulatives
The students found out that you can put 5 straws in the bears. We asked the students if the bears each have 5 straws, how many straws do you have? Students worked to show their thinking.
Learners enjoy reflecting on their learning journey by looking through their portfolios.
Writing about their building creations.
Daily writing (see below for the retell of 'The 3 Little Pigs'
Students began to create spinning tops using cubes. They wanted to time each spinner to see which one would last the longest. These two worked together to time and record each trial.
