1-211 Classroom UpdatesThe Wizards have been building their math skills these last weeks through math centers, minute math, Kakooma, and differentiated math sheets. Kakooma is a great math resource that allows students to work on their mental math skills and number sense.
We are currently working on assessing our glows and our grows. I am conducting running records on every student to assess reading levels. Once reading levels have been officially assessed, we can begin our Guided Reading Groups. I am seeing your children grow as writers, even now in September! It's exciting to see them express themselves through their writing. I will be working on creating differentiated word work packets for the students shortly. |
What are the Wizards Are working on?
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Morning Meeting - Here Wizards come together and check in with one another. We discuss the flow of the day, talk about the days of the week, how many days we've been in school, students share about their weekends or activities they participated in the night before, and read our morning message. Students then go off and write about something they love, something that is important to them, events they've enjoyed, expectations, and personal goals. Once we finally get into the flow of things, we will be traveling around the world through texts and google earth. This is an exciting time because students get to learn about different cultures, countries, and customs. These last few weeks we have been working on talking about how we feel and we begin our day by saying something positive about ourselves!
Poem of the Week - Each student has a Poetry Notebook which they use daily. We first read the poem as a group. Every student will have a chance to read the poem off of the smartboard. Students will learn about the importance of poetry, rhyming words, vocabulary review, and word study. Students will also express how the poem makes them feel by creating illustrations in their notebooks. Literacy Centers - Students practice reading/word study skills through games. Students remain in one center for 6-8 minutes. Once the time is up, they move to the next center. Games include: sight word bingo, dry erase boards and tricky words, sight word board games, rhyming words matching game, letter blocks, tricky word review, zingo, letter grab, write the room, word search, and independent reading time. Socratic Seminars - Students discuss issues read in non-fiction news articles, poems or books they've read independently or whole class. Students sit in a circle and they have conversations about anything and everything. This is a time when students question each other, without being pushed by the teacher, and tell one another their opinions on certain matters. We are building our conversational and questioning skills daily, but I am excited of what's to come. |