March - May Literacy Events
Most recent listed first.
May,
2001
Our
big literacy project this month involves each child writing a bug book and
having it published in our school publishing house.
This very special project is a culmination of reading, listening and
learning lots about insects and other bugs.
Entitled,
I Like Bugs, each child’s book effort is based on the poem I Like Bugs:
Black bugs, green bugs,
Bad bugs, mean bugs,
Any kind of bug.
A bug in a house,
A bug in a glass,
A bug on the sidewalk,
A bug in the grass.
I like bugs.
Our
publishing house project involves children preparing the pages for their book,
brainstorming for all the different kinds of bugs, not by name but by
description and then location, and then drawing and printing most of the words
in the book. Adults provide the
help in scribing the dedication, the “about the author-illustrator” page,
and portions of the comments section. Finally
mother helpers sew the pages together and iron them (with paper glue) into the
fabric-covered, cardboard covers that were jig sawed by one child’s grandpa.
They are keepsakes forever.
Our
search to learn more about bugs lead us to a multitude of books about bugs and
insects; we searched the school yard and our own back yards to capture a few
specimens that we could look at more at school; we thoroughly enjoyed the field
trip to the Provincial Museum to look at the real bugs as well as to play in the
Discovery Room. The bird-eating
tarantula is really awesome…the stick bugs really look like leaves; the whole
display of butterflies and moths is full of symmetry; the water striders look
like they are dancing.
We
were given a terrarium with walking sticks, only to later discover that they are
banned in Alberta because they have no known predators here.
(However, they are fascinating to watch…and even more interesting to
hold! They feel like lightweight,
mini suctions cups on your arm).
Our
collection of songs to sing about bugs continues to grow.
We started with The Ants Go Marching, The First Grasshopper Jumped Right
Over the Second Grasshopper’s Back, and I’m Bringing Home My Baby Bumble
Bee. After making Worms in Mud for Kindercooking, we learned Nobody Loves Me (going to the garden to eat worms).
Arabella Miller is a natural extension song for children and adults who
aren’t sure they really do like bugs. We
have just received a CD from Australia with the song, “The Brown Ant” by the
Wiggles that my children are excited about.
Our
Show and Tell program is winding down. This
month we featured the sounds of, /l/, /k/, the letters C,c, K,k, Q,q, and L,l,
and the vowel, I,i. Next
month we will only feature the letter J,j, and then use the remaining weeks to
have the children finish those pages in their Show and Tell drawing books that
either they missed, or that we did not feature (U, X, Y, Z).
They will look through picture dictionaries to get some good ideas and I
have suggested that children may enjoy adding their picture to the page with the
first letter of their name (also for their friends).
Our
writing table has again taken on the location for drafting telephone books.
Children are interested in making a book to hold their friends’ name
and phone number. Now that children
see each other more out of school (at soccer games and after school play dates)
phone directories are almost a necessity.
Reading
at-home books is starting to show big results.
The sight recognition of simple words is growing noticeably.
We are checking everyone’s recognition of 55 sight words and are
impressed with the number of words many children can recognize.
Part
of our evaluation at this time of the year, involves each child trying to write
Happy Birthday Mom. The range of
ability is evident from those children trying and succeeding at doing inventive
spelling to those recognizing initial consonants, to those children who know Mom
and want to write that first…to those who are just beginning to associate
letters and their corresponding sounds.
Our
special project to learn some sign language has been really successful.
We can give and receive simple commands to sit, stand, come here, and be
quiet, as well as to name common objects, numbers and
colours. We have learned to
sing with signs: Goodbye My friends, Goodbye; and we have learned some fun to do
signs, like caterpillar and grapes. And
we have learned that our friend who uses sign language is a real person who can
tell us easily if she likes us or not.
We
look forward to the next school month (June) when our major learning will
revolve around Farms and Farm Animals and Summer Fun.
The whole year has flown by at incredible speed.
It is difficult to believe that registrations are in place for the next
year and that plans are crystallizing for these children to go to grade one.
April,
2001
Something green, something
brown.
Something for a fairy crown.
Something hard, something yellow,
Something shiny, my young fellow.
Something long, something wide,
something with something else inside.
Something smooth, a bit of down.
Something that should have stayed in town (litter).
I think it was written by Christina Rosetti.
-
We touched pussy
willows with our fingers and our cheeks.
This poem was our inspiration:
Close your eyes and do not peek.
I'll rub some springtime on your cheek.
Soft as satin, smooth and sleek.
Close your eyes and do not peek.
-
We hatched a dozen eggs
and got a dozen chicks! (Actually the first two batches did not...and we
realized our incubator was working very well!!!...the thermometer which said
40 degrees was really wrong...it was much hotter in there - we must have
cooked the first two batches!!!) Thank goodness Miller Hatcheries wanted us
to succeed!!! The children learned the poem:
Peck, peck, peck on the
warm brown egg;
Out comes the head, Out comes a leg.
How does a chick whose never been about,
Figure the way of how to get out?
-
We also made paper eggs
with a cut that swung on split pins to become the wings for the paper chick
underneath (with leg and head that can turn out...). Sometimes it is harder
to describe than it seems...
-
We enjoyed reading
What's Inside, by May Garelick and Chicks Are Not The Only Ones.
-
The big hit at the
writing table was a dozen plastic eggs, each with a paper egg inside with
the picture and word of an animal that comes from an
egg. owl, fish,
dinosaur, alligator, turtle, bird, ladybug, etc) The
colour-coordinated paper made it easier for children to replace the paper
egg in the corresponding plastic egg after the child had
"discovered" something that comes from an egg, drawn it in his
little writing book and
replaced it in the egg carton. Writing is becoming something many children
want to do each day.
Petting a visiting
bunny; playing special games like pin the tail on the bunny, and egg and
spoon race; going on an Easter egg hunt to collect candy eggs; and learning
the bunny hop (in which all children finally demonstrated
in a giant conga line) were just a few of the activities that we attempted
at our Easter Party.
We have decided to try
to grow some flowers for our mothers for mothers day, so immediately after
Easter we painted flower pots (the 4" clay ones that Michaels had on
sale for 25 cents each a few months ago), filled them with dirt and added
seeds - choices included marigolds, bachelor buttons, and sun flower seeds.
Actually we coated the paint with a sealer before we planted and watered...
In April, the whole
school had a visiting Writer in Residence, Kathy Jessop. She visited with
each class each week and told stories, modeled writing (in picture form as
well as words) and discussed simple editing. She
told children that writing can be hard. She encouraged them to use their own
bubbling soup-pot for unique ideas, and she praised all their efforts. I was
amazed at what I say my children doing with this very brief
writing project. We used a sheet of paper divided into 4 cells. Every story
has a beginning a middle and an end. Since the middle should be more than
either the beginning or the end, we devoted two spaces to the middle of the
story. The first day, Mrs. Jessop told the children a story that she had
written herself, a story of a little girl who didn't want to take a bath and
then runs away from home to find an animal family to live with. She
encounters a bird who likes to take bird baths, and a pig that rolls
in the mud and then rinses off under a spout. The children drew Hilary or
their own character (frequently choosing themselves. They drew
the animals that the hero meets, and often showed her with a sad face,
because she was not going to stay with them either. In all of the stories,
the little girl goes home to her family where mom and dad finally
compromise, not insisting that she bath each day: Mom wanted 7 days a week;
Hilary wanted one day a week, and dad suggests a compromise of 3 times a
week. Somehow a satisfying end for all. Not only did the children
get encouragement to draw, all were encouraged to print one or more words
below each picture: the name of the character or hero of the story in the
first cell; the two animals that Hilary visited and finally Mom and Dad.
The second week more children were really willing to try to write, but by
the third week, I didn't notice any child trying to hand in a paper with no
words on it. A few children were trying inventive spelling on
their own.
With education week were
were asked to draw a picture for a school-wide display on the theme:
Education is the Opportunity to...The kindergarten decided to explore
opportunity to become...and discussed occupations we
might want to pursue when we grow up. The caption said, "When I grow
up, I want to be a..." Fully prepared to dictate or spell words for the
children, I was very surprised to see many children wanting to try it on
their own.
Our final writing
project this month followed our field trip to John Janzen. Children were
asked to draw the things that they were the most impressed with, or that
they remembered the best. Touching a snake, finding
a nest, playing hide and seek, and listening for the sound of ground
squirrels, were some of the highlight that children told me to write in our
letter to the staff. But in their story pictures, I was able to read about
the "SNAK", "I saW a sQRUL", "DUK",or
"duce" or "dak".
I try to listen to each
child read something each week. Their At Home Reading books are being well
used and children seem proud to be able to tell, "I already know that
one!" Children do not instinctively track from
left to right, but since we have asked them to try, they are nearly all
doing it, at least when prompted. Sing-songy voices or word-by-word reading
is another area in which many children are working (to make their voice
sound like ordinary talking).
Show and Tell in April
focused on R,r, G, g, W, w, and the vowel, E,e. In addition to the showing,
telling and corresponding question answering, each child draws his/her
object in the ABC Show and Tell Book which is a
26 page blank booklet with a letter of the alphabet on each page. After the
child draws his object, he labels it with the word that starts with the
letter of the week. We have also tried to use a rubber stamp to praise the
child for their idea and have attempted to use a praise word to match the
letter of the week (ie., Radical, or Right On! For R; Great, or Good Work
for G; Wow or wonderful for W; Excellent or even "eggs-citing" for
E.) (We have not been able to purchase a set of rubber stamps that features
all letters of the alphabet with a praise word on each. We continue to
look.)
March 2001 Kindergarten at Earl Buxton
During the month of March, my kindergarten classroom was
transformed into an undersea garden/beach/tidal pool.
My student teacher took a lot of leadership in hanging decorations around
the room and bringing in interesting additions to the room as well a gradually
talking on more of the whole teaching role.
In addition to two aquariums, she set up a science center to check out
salt and fresh water; an estimation table for guessing small objects in a jar;
an overhead snorkel, wetsuit and mask; and a display of shells and toy sea
creatures- mammals, fish, reptiles, mollusks, etc.
The sand box was variously a wet sand and a dry sand area.
The water table had a new focus each week:
fishing; boats; sink and float; and the water canal.
We read books about ocean animals, both fact and fiction.
We sang songs about fish and the beach.
We even tasted seaweed.
A class story book was started.
After enjoying Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin Jr. many times, we
brainstormed for different animals that lived under the sea and then revised the
pattern beginning with each of the children’s names (Michael, Michael, what do
you see? I see a dolphin looking at
me.) Each child drew one sea
creature on a fish shaped page that was eventually coiled as a class book, with
the back of each page having the question for the next picture page.
In addition we digitally photographed each page which resulted in a slide
show/presentation for the school website. It
is currently being posted at
www.epsb.edmonton.ab.ca
then click on Schools and enter the name of Earl Buxton.
Check out the “surprise” ending for our book…we have the FOIP
permission forms for the class photo…
We continued our Show and Tell program with a different
letter of the week to focus children’s awareness of initial sounds.
This month we dealt with B.b, F,f, and the vowel O,o.
Our usual procedure was to introduce the letter on the Monday with a
puppet story and perhaps, a song (that the puppet liked to sing).
The story and song were full of words that started with the given letter.
We also read the pocket chart with picture word cards that started with
the same letter. Five or six
children brought their show and tell object on Tuesday – Friday, according to
the schedule developed earlier in the year.
We asked them to hide or cover their object and be prepared to tell (or
read) three clues about the object which the rest of the class would try to
guess. This procedure is working
well now that everyone has had time to watch and participate in both sides more
than six times since January.
Our Home Reading Program which started in January has
completed one cycle of books, and early in March, a new set of books was
available for the children to borrow. Very
similar to the ones used earlier, these are early emergent and emergent reading
books, frequently with eight pages. (This
is published as Literacy 2000).
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