Flip Cams and Pancakes

As I delve deeper into the craft of teaching, I summoned all my moxie and ditched the Reading series teacher edition (for this week). It is important for me to mention that based on my data from assessments, my kiddos are meeting expectations in phonics and phonemic awareness, which does not mean I abandoned the reading foundation skills for my skillet.  Rest assured stakeholders, those skills were taught this week in conjunction with listening, speaking and writing standards during Reading block. We also read informational text in Social Studies (inside Reading block) on Benjamin Franklin and wrote about this famous American using details from our ladder graphic organizer. 

Armed with, literature from our Media Center (thanks, girls!) and lots of courage, I set out to build a lesson that would address many standards at once.  The children were able to retell the stories we read and compare and contrast adventures of story characters and events.  They also identified with the author and illustrator of a text when they created accordion books and sequenced events of the wordless text, Pancakes for Breakfast.  The lesson started gaining momentum and I got so excited I wanted to record our progress.  Unbeknownst to malomee, she comes up to me and shows me a flip cam she borrowed from our Media Center (gotta love those girls) to record her children reading. AHH!!  True to her giving nature, malomee suggested I use the flip cam in my lesson (malomee to the rescue!!).  My hope is the children will be able to access throughout their learning the skills taught embedded in the sticky sweetness of the syrup and pancakes.

With love,
Mrs. C.

Books?  Check.  Graphic organizer?  Check.  Griddle?  Check.  Children ready to learn? Check, check, check!

Pancakes, Pancakes movie

Happy New Year!

Hello Families,
I am sorry it has been so long!!  There are many updates to inform you of with our homework (again?!), available websites for enrichment activities and our schedule.  I will try to keep it brief.
Homework will not be checked or graded and is for the enrichment of skills taught during the week.
Spelling City can be used to practice high frequency words.  I will send home a letter this week on how you can access your learner's sight words (a.k.a high frequency words and heart words).
Here is a powerpoint you can use to practice sight words as well http://www.slideshare.net/mllc04/storytown-sight-words.
IXL is a math website to be used in addition to our math series.  You will also receive a letter with login and password information for your learner.
If you are completely bored and have nothing to do (ha, ha, ha), you can go to Mr. Maffesoli's Math Common Core Standards to see what your learner is expected to know before they leave Kindergarten.  Thanks to his hard work, you can even do activities that correlate to the standard.
The common core Writing standard I would like to focus on for homework is W.K.1 which says your learner will use a combination of drawing, dictating and writing to compose informative (we say expository) texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic.  The framework we use is a topic sentence, for example, "My favorite book is The Wizard of Oz for three reasons.  Then we use transitional phrases first, next, last and in conclusion to form our explanation.  I will send home a copy of the framework and the rubric used to assess your learner's progress.  I will also write in the planner the topic we are working on each week so that you can help them write at home.  Please be sure to let your learner sound out each word they attempt to write using the sound charts that went home.  If that is too difficult, they can draw what they are trying to express.
On a lighter note, we are trying to go to the computer lab, every other Tuesday.
Your children have grown so very much in such a short period of time, sometimes it astounds me.  I am so very grateful to be a part of their learning experience.  Thank you for your trust and patience.

If you have any questions at all, please contact me, we are in this together!

Fondly,
Mrs. C.