A Day in the Life of Your Kindergartner
A Day in the Life of Your Kindergartner
Name Ticket Sign In -- Each day your child comes into the classroom and finds his or her name on a name ticket. They trace the letters in the model and eventually learn to write it themselves. It serves as a means to help young children learn to print their names in a meaningful and risk-free way. It also teaches each child to recognize the letters in their name. The procedure for this activity is simplistic yet meaningful to the children. It builds a sense of community within the classroom. Each day they have the opportunity to become more proficient in the formation of the letters in their names. We can circulate the room and assist as necessary. The level of support gradually decreases as they see they can do it all on their own! If mistakes are made, they have the opportunity to fix their errors.
The children write their names on name tickets for a variety of purposes: to sign-in for the day, to attach to work that will be displayed, to go to lunch, and to show ownership of a class-made book. The children love writing their names all day long because it becomes meaningful and effortless.
Morning Message -- The morning message is a time for our class to think about what is going to be happening during the school day, to reflect on an important event from the day before, or to discuss a meaningful upcoming event. At the start of the school year, I model and write for the students. However, as the year progresses, the students begin to take more ownership of this time and write the message with me in a shared writing or interactive writing format.
Our message is very predictable and most students can quickly help say and/or write the first letters and high frequency or sight words such as 'is', 'the', and a student's name. Students get quite excited about being able to contribute!
Why Do We Write A Morning Message?
By participating in the writing of our morning message, students learn...
- writing is speech written down
- proper letter formation
- upper and lower case letter recognition
- associating letters and sounds
- left to right progression
- differentiate between a letter, a word, and a sentence
- reading of common sight words
- spacing
- punctuation
- to look for patterns within words (word families)
Calendar –
Each day we begin our “mathematical discussion” using the Number Corner calendar. It is an interactive bulletin board that revolves around the classroom calendar, providing skills practice as well as continual encounters with broader mathematical concepts. It is a component of our adopted Kindergarten Bridges math.
In a Number Corner classroom, daily workouts involve whole-group games and activities focused on a specific skill or concept. New pieces are added to the display each day -- patterns unfold, school days are tallied, and coins are collected -- providing the basis for discussions, problem solving, and short written assignments including independent practice. The children become familiar with different aspects of math in a risk free setting as they are engaged by using concrete and accessible models related to computational strategies, place value, money, time, measuring, and algebraic thinking. (Math Learning Center)
Weather –
We also take a few minutes to check out the weather forecast. Using a computer or a weather application, we track the weather symbol and talk about the predicted temperature. We talk about whether it is warmer or cooler and we’ll adjust the thermometer accordingly.
Phonemic Awareness/Reading Strategies/Sight Words
We build a strong foundation for reading and literacy through a variety of activities. Often, you’ll hear us singing a song as we practice our ability to hear the words, remember them, and repeat them. We’ll be using a multi-kinesthetic approach as we sign letters and words or use motions to help act out the words. We read aloud small books, big books, and make books of our own. We currently use the American Reading Company’s Independent Reading Level Assessment and supplemental reading kits to instruct students at just the right level. Students also have access to many books at their independent reading level for consistent practice. Students are engaged in whole group lessons as well as participating in small group lessons. As students gain skills in reading, we’ll also be practicing our skills with the Sails series of readers from the Rigby Company. We further supplement as needed with small groups, books, and skills activities using Read Well products.
What's the difference between phonological awareness and phonemic awareness?
Here is some great information explaining...https://www.readingrockets.org/teaching/reading101-course/modules/phonological-and-phonemic-awareness-introduction
We use the Heggedy Phonemic Awareness Program:
Math – Bridges in Mathematics (Math Learning Center)
The mathematics in the Kindergarten Bridges program fully address the Common Core State Standards for Kindergarten. Bridges develops children’s mathematical thinking and reasoning abilities through age appropriate problems and investigations in the areas of number, operations, algebraic thinking, measurement, data, and geometry. Key visual models are featured to help deepen students’ mathematical learning. The Bridges curriculum includes eight units of study containing 20 sessions. Additionally, the Common Core State Standards describe eight mathematical practices that characterize the ways in which mathematically proficient students engage with mathematical content. Our kindergarten students begin to employ these practices with support from the teacher. Our focus will emphasize learning ways to communicate our mathematical reasoning and model with mathematics.
Literacy Stations and Activities –
These stations offer hands on, engaging, meaningful opportunities to practice all of our basic skill for reading and writing. They are varied through the week so the practice stays “fresh” and exciting. We read with students, read to students, and there is reading by students. We write with students, we write for students, and students write independently to foster the building of strong skills in literate reading and writing. Children will have journals where they illustrate stories from their lives, or from their imaginations. Later, many will be adding written language to support their illustrated adventures. By the end of the year, we are writing and illustrating simple stories with good beginnings, middles, and ends.
Recess then Lunch –
The children get lined up for recess then lunch. We have a wonderful red wagon that serves as our “Home Lunch Bus”. Each week there are two helpers that pull the wagon as their classroom helper job. Our routine gets smoother all the time!
Beach Blanket Read Aloud –
After lunch, we come in for a bit of relaxing with a good book. This is a wonderful opportunity to allow the children to rest a bit without having to “do” something. It also offers the opportunity to hear word patterning, phrasing, and fluency as they listen to the story as it is read aloud.
Often we end that time with a bit of singing and motion to get ourselves back into the active mode.
Specials –
All of the children in Kindergarten get the opportunity to go out to “Specials” every day. We go to see Ms. Becker in the Library two days a week. One day, they get to work on literacy activities. The second day is for learning about new books through book talks and to check out books. Throughout the week we also have Music with Ms. Sandoval, P.E. with Ms. Bader, and Art with Ms. Randall.
Recess and Snack–
Currently, we offer time outside as a body movement break and a chance to play with friends. When we come in, there are a lot of hungry children. Please provide your child some sort of morning and afternoon healthy nibble to get them through the day. I sometimes have a small tidbit if they are really hungry. If you would care to donate a group snack, we would greatly appreciate it. In the past, we’ve eaten apples, bananas, pretzels, graham crackers, and gold fish crackers.
Science or Social Studies –
Throughout the year, we’ll be doing mini units on a variety of subjects. We alternate the subjects so we get to cover a lot of ground! We started this year with an apple unit. It is very thematic as:
· we learn how apple seeds grow,
· we read and write about apples
· we color apples and practice our sight words
· we taste different apples,
· we graph our favorite choices,
· we set up a science experiment to see if we can grow apple seeds from the apples we tasted.
Other science highlights from the year will be our Salmon unit – complete with hatching the fry and releasing them. We’ll team up with Mr. Nebert’s class to help us learn here. We’ll also learn how pumpkins grow and what we might find on a farm. Our first field trip will be to the Pumpkin Patch in October. Science units will also include learning how things move in nature (insects and animals) and how things move when they are human made (simple tools, transportation, force and motion). We’ll learn about weather, too. Of course, we take great advantage of our school community garden, too.
Our Social Studies units will include learning about maps, learning about homes, cultures, and children in different parts of the world, jobs, and economy. We even look at some groups or people of interest from the past and put them into a timeline so that we understand the world around us in a more historical way.
Great Body Shop / Community
Our adopted health curriculum is The Great Body Shop. It basically helps us learn how to keep our minds and bodies healthy. We learn how to be a good friend, how to solve our problems in respectful ways, how and why we follow rules.
Choice Time –
Most days end with the opportunity for the children to have a free choice of activities. This is a time to explore building with a variety of objects or try your hand at painting. Perhaps reading a book, having some pretend time with your friends, or putting together puzzles is more the choice for the day. Several options are given so each child finds something to engage their minds. We don’t just play, we also learn social rules and we practice our language skills.
Caring for Our Classroom –
At the end of the day, we all team together to ready our classroom for the next day. Each child is encouraged to help out in some way. They are learning to care for their environment, take on responsibility, and be helpers to the community of our classroom.