Not much to report today–I almost didn’t post!  I don’t have any photos for this post because we tied up some loose ends.  We read aloud our predictable chart, we will do cut-up sentences tomorrow with them.  We also read our Big Book again, and this time we played “Guess The Covered Word”.  I covered up the key parts of the pumpkin: seed, sprout, plant, flower, pulp, face.  We then read the story as normal, stopping when we got to the covered parts and using our prior knowledge of the story to help us figure out the words.  We used “thumbs-up” to tell whether or not we agreed with the prediction that was made about each word.  We checked the first letter and then checked the prediction again, until we uncovered the whole word.  This will become a new activity in the Big Book Work Station.

We also completed a page showing the life cycle of a pumpkin.  We sequenced the life cycle and glued them in the correct order. I wanted the children to see this so they understood some of what it takes to get a pumpkin to their home for fall holidays. My goal this week is just to briefly go over pumpkins and come back in two weeks and go more in depth.  I want to build that background knowlege for our trip to the apple orchard/pumpkin patch.

We also did our first writing sample today.  The children were to write about something they were thinking about.  I gave them 15 minutes–that seemed to be just right!  Our district scores them based upon the developmental writing stages.  A 1 is scribbling, 2 is letter like forms, 3 is random letters/environmental print ie; copying words from the walls/labels, 4 is semi-phonetic spelling, 5 is phonetic spelling and 6 is appropriate for Kindergarten traditional spelling (most words spelled correctly).  I like to have them at a 4-5 to feel comfortable sending them on to 1st grade.  I will talk more with my students families at conference time about this and how to get them to that point. 🙂

Questions?

Just ask!

Kristen 😉