February

February

We are several months into our Heggerty phonics lessons and thinking more deeply about incorporating play into our classroom practices. We are in the midst of two major units of study in reading and writing - "Super Powers - Reading with Phonics and Sight Word Power" and - "Personal Narratives". 

Play in Reading

We kicked off our reading unit talking about super heroes and what their powers are. We showed or explained what our super heroes' powers are in the introduction to this unit. As we learned each Reading Super Power, we practiced an arm motion to match.This reflects our phonics practices in Heggerty. Ex., when learning slider power, looking through a word from beginning to end, saying each of the sounds carefully, we added a big slide with our arm from left to right showing how we slide through a word. Next, we added "robot talk" when saying each sound to really annunciate the sounds. The kids loved talking like robots. Another power we practiced was sight word power - reading high frequency words in a snap. We practiced this power in partnerships. The kids got a Tic-Tac-Toe write on and wipe off sheet and a snap word cards set. They kids took turns picking cards and writing the sight words on the game board to get 3 in a row. They enjoyed this game.

Play in Writing

We kicked off our personal narrative writing unit in the most fun way! We gathered as a whole class in a circle with the lights off and I put a fake camp fire in the center of the circle. After talking about what a true story is, I began the story telling by sharing a fun true story of my own. The kids each had a turn telling a short true story aloud to the class. We continued to practice our story telling "around the camp fire" during morning meeting the whole first week of the unit. Five kids shared each day and the class listened in. Next, I practiced the oral story telling that we saw in the video. I scribed a child's true story and then told it aloud to the class. I slowly called up children to be part of our "live story telling". We did this a few times over several days. Children are natural story tellers. They love telling about things that happened, something that is on their mind, or something that is going on in their family, even if it is very peripheral - "my uncles birthday is today". The kids had great fun bringing their stories to life!

Play in Social Studies

At the end of January, the children completed a 2 months long social studies unit on themselves and their family. First, they made identity maps telling all about them selves. They took selfies and mounted these on paper they painted. They wrote things about themselves on small strips of paper and glued them on Next, they made crafted symbols of holidays their family celebrates with model magic. They modeled, colored and glued these to a board vertically. During the beginning of this unit in social studies, the children were writing Show and Tell books. As a final show and tell book in this unit, they got to show off all they learned in a show and tell book about their family. They incorporated sight words, demonstrated their understanding of a show and tell pattern book, and drew from their phonics lessons to make words to write and illustrate their books. In the final family project, the children were tasked with creating their family members and a setting in a diorama. The art and writing experiences in this unit aloud for creativity in multiple forms. The children had choice and agency in their learning.