Reminder

 

I wanted to remind everyone that I will not be at school all day on Tuesday, November 20th since another teacher and I have been asked to create lesson plans for teachers to use with the Toronto Dominion Bank Book. Every year the Toronto Dominion Bank gives every child in Grade One a free book. This is to promote a love of reading in the children at an early age. My friend Pam Schonewille and have have been creating the lesson plans for teachers to use with the book for a number of years now. The board contacted me and asked if I would still be interested in working on the lesson plans even though I am teaching Kindergarten now. I love creating the lessons and Pam and I work so well together the ideas flow from each of us. 

By Heart Words

 

 

For the week of November 19th our By Heart Words are:  "look"  "green".

 

The jolly phonics sound for this week is the "d" sound. On the message each day I will write easy "d" words for the children to try to figure out. Some of the words are:  dad, did, do, dig, dug, dip, den, dog. The children are really enjoying the challenge of trying to figure out the words by blending the sounds together.

 

The little books the students will be creating this week are: "Here is"... The SK students print each sentence and make a picture of something and try to print that word. For example: Here is my coat.

 

Dramatic Play Centre

 

The students decided to change the dramatic play centre to become a Pet Store. On Thursday we brainstormed everything we would need to have a pet store. Their ideas were the following: pet food, little bowls for food and water, leashes and collars, different kinds of pets, cages, wallpaper with paw prints, cash register, money, paper and pencils. We painted boxes and drew black marker lines on them to represent cages. I had a cage and I purchased two toy pet carriers from Value Village. I also purchased a few stuffed animals. A donation of little hamsters, without the batteries. On the weekend I went to Pet Smart and picked up some of their flyers. The students will use the flyers to sort and classify the various pets. The students will have additional opportunities to add more materials to the Pet Store. The children are invited to bring their little stuffed animals (please not big ones) to the pet shop. Please make sure the children's names are on the pet. The children also decided it would be fair to have 4 children in the centre at a time. They will be making the sign for the centre on Monday. Everything is ready to go for Monday. This should be a fun centre.

 

 

 Reading Comprehension Strategy - Retell

Story Retelling

The ability to retell a story helps children to focus on what has been read. The children will learn to organize their thoughts and gather information as the story is read to them. Overtime, students will learn about the setting, the characters, and putting the events of the story in sequential order. Young children need to begin learning about story retelling. After you read a story to your child, he/she should be encouraged to retell the events from the story in the order in which they occurred. Some simple stories we will be using at school to start learning about story retelling are these stories that have predictable text:

The Little Red Hen

The Three Little Pigs
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?

Gingerbread Boy

Gingerbread Girl

Gingerbread Man

We will do a comparison between the three gingerbread stories.

We will be spending about one week on two stories.

 

The Retell Strategy will take us over the rest of November and most of the month of December. The children are young and require lots of practise orally retelling the story in the proper sequential order. Usually they tell too little or too much. The goal is for them to tell the important events that occurred at the beginning, middle and end of the story.

 

To reinforce this skill at home, begin with stories that your child knows and loves. When the story is over ask your child:

1. the setting (where did the story take place).
2. who were the characters in the story (who were the people or animals in the story).
3. finally ask your child to put the events of the story in order by asking, What happened first? What happened next? What happened at the end of the story? You can also see if your child is able to tell you the problem that occurred in the story.

Mathematics

 

In the area of Mathematics we will continue exploring and experimenting with two dimensional shapes. Most of the students are aware of the names of the shapes, oval, circle, square, and triangle. Now they will have opportunities to make the various shapes and tell others how they know a circle is a circle. There are a variety of math stations the children will be working at in order to reinforce their understanding. They will also be given opportunities where they can orally share their understanding of the various shapes and what makes a particular shape different from another shape.