Teresa
Landry's Class
September 12, 2000
Greetings, Everyone! Hope your year is off to a great start. My kindergarten
class began yesterday, Sept. 11. We will be running Mon.-Thurs. till Easter, and
Mon.-Fri. after Easter. Our hours are 8:55A.M.-Noon. We have 25 children, 13
boys and 12 girls. One of the boys is a PUF student. He has an aide. There is no
classroom assistant, though.
So far, we have read a is for apple,
Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten, and Clifford's First
School Day. Our poem for Sept. goes:
"September"
Thirty days are in September.
Thirty days: can you remember?
School begins,
then comes fall.
Thirty days: let's count them all!
We started our "Writing Books" yesterday, and will have a writing
period every day at 11:30. Yesterday the children wrote their names on the
cover, and decorated/drew/wrote on the first page. We're using plain unlined
scribblers. Today we had a practice fire drill, so we "magic fingered"
the letters Fire Drill, and then copied the words into our books. I was pleased
to see how many children chose to do this, though of course there were some who
preferred to just draw.
We're also learning an opening, snack time,
and closing prayer. The words are in pocket charts, and I point as we go. This
year, I hope to make word-match, smaller versions for the kids to use.
I'm trying out a system for reading that
seems to be working well so far. I read a teacher-chosen selection after
Calendar Time, then pass a book to each child to look at/read before they choose
a play centre. Just before home time, the snack child picks a book for me to
read to the class. I read to kids during play centre time when they ask, or need
a suggestion for an activity. So they get at least 2 formal stories a day, and
more on demand.
Well, I have a meeting in 10 minutes, so
that's it for now! Looking forward to hearing from all of you...
Your colleague,
"Miss Teresa"
October Summary
Well, I had the best of intentions to keep a daily record of our literacy
activities, but then life got in the way...so here is a brief review of
October...
Our October
poem goes: "The new month is October.
The days are thirty-one.
Thanksgiving Day we celebrate,
and Halloween is fun!"
I have a sheet of chart paper on display, where we record important events as
they occur. I model writing for the children, using their suggestions of the
important things that happen. They now notice periods, the word 'We', which they
like to count as it adds up (We had..., We went..., We saw...,etc.), and they
know that when you run out of room, you "go down, and back to the
front". Of course, not all of them know all that, but they all like
to point out features of print that they've noticed, and a couple have
"written" their own poems! At the end of the month, they receive a
copy of the poem, and illustrate it with their choice of important events form
our list. These and other 2-dimentional works are kept in their "Remember
Books", which go home on the last day of school in June.
Every day, I or a student
teacher read a story to the class, and later the snack person chooses one. We
have some books on tape, and vary the reading. I'll ask whether they want my
voice or the taped version, and they don't always choose the tape! Some days, I
wind up reading stories for 30-40 minutes after Calendar Time, as children
choose to stay and listen rather than go to play centers.
We've been comparing some story
formats, using Inside A House That Is Haunted and Outside A Zoo In The
City by Alyssa Satin Capucilli/Tedd Arnold. We're working our way through
the Clifford library, and many know those are written and illustrated by Norman
Bridwell. One day we'll visit his website...
Thursday, November 23, 2000:
Two weeks ago, we used
"soft" as our Show'n'Tell category, so today we went with
"rough". Items featured included sandpaper, rocks, wood, and even a
pair of mittens with rough wool. Later, children with sandpaper and children
with chunks of wood got together. We talked about how strange it is that
something rough can make something smooth!
A book gaining popularity is Long
Train, Short Train by Frank Asch. The pages fold out to reveal a long
version of the original picture, and the kids get excited about being able to
"read" the words through prediction. Some kept using the word
"big", but after repeated readings, this has disappeared.
Every Thursday, the children who have
returned last week's book can choose a new one to take home. We don't use the
school library, but this compromise has worked well, since they take home books
they have heard read in class. They are getting quite creative at hiding books
they want, shopping for books they aren't as familiar with, and planning for
taking home a book next time that someone else has already chosen today. I gain
insight into which books are popular, and what individual kids' tastes are, so I
know what to order. Surprisingly few books go missing...
Wednesday, November 22, 2000:
Today we examined the pumpkin seeds (and learned what "examine"
means). They hadn't changed much...We got out our writing books and copied
"pumpkin seeds", and drew them. Children were excited to copy the
words, and several knew which letter stands for "puh", "mmm",
"kuh". Now here's something that comes up every year: children assume
that c says "SSSS"! I say "Sometimes it does, but this time we
need another letter that stands for ssss like in ssssnake", and someone
always knows s. We wrote on the floor with the seed jar right in front of us,
and they were inspired to do their best with no prompting from me.
Tuesday, November 21, 2000:
We began with the usual calendar routine: we
gather in "Calendar Corner" when the bell rings, and sing "Good
morning, good morning, it's good to see you all!
Good morning, good morning, now listen while we call..."
and then I go down the attendance chart and we sing "Good Morning,
So-and-So". Each child is supposed to echo sing "Good morning,
everyone", and most of them will.
Then we do the calendar thing.
Today's snack child chose Bear in a Square
by Stella Blackstone/Debbie Harter (one boy exclaimed "Hey, my mom's name
is Debbie!"). This is an excellent concept book involving shapes and
counting. The children enjoyed examining the pictures to find the shapes
mentioned in the text.
After the group reading, we passed
out storybooks to everyone, and as they finished, they went off to play centers.
A group stayed behind with me, and we read Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for
Kindergarten (Slate/Wolff). This time we focused in on the alphabet letters
at the front of the children's names, for about the first half of the book
before my kids got bored. We read a few more books together, with a couple kids
leaving and a couple joining in. I was there about half an hour altogether...
While the children played, I had time to
catch up on scribing our matchbooks I hadn't time for yesterday, so everyone's
was finished today, and the kids took them home. Stories about checking
batteries and finding family meeting places have been trickling in, so I feel
good about our fire safety learning.
One of the things I hadn't gotten to
yet was planting the pumpkin seeds I saved form our jack-o-lantern. After snack,
we gathered again, and set up a jar with paper towel so we'll be able to watch
our seeds sprout and develop. Today we did a class jar; later in the spring
we'll plant individual ones, and remember back to this time. Then we read It's
Pumpkin Time (Hall/Halpern), though I didn't show the final panel depicting
the stages of growth: I'll wait until our own seeds have begun to grow...
The children enjoyed remembering back to
Halloween, and when I pointed out another book we still have in the book display,
called Apples and Pumpkins (Anne and Lizzy Rockwell), they shouted
"Read it , too!" so we did. Tomorrow we'll begin writing books about
our seeds growing...
We haven't used our writing books in a
while...oh, well...
November 20
A summary of November events thus far...
November: November, too, has thirty days.
Each one is crisp and clear. (We've
noticed not!)
We think of poppies and soldier men: (Yeah, I know it's
sexist,
Remembrance Day is near.
but it fits the rhythm.)
We learned to sing "O Canada", and it is requested almost every day
now. We've been learning about fire safety, and a great book for that, featured
in IRA's magazine "The Reading Teacher" this month, is No Dragons
for Tea by Jean Pendziwol/Martine Gourbault. I have collected quite a few
Fire-related books, and the kids have been inspired to put out several fires
around the classroom! We illustrated our own matchbooks with fire safety rules.
The books are made by stapling pieces of white paper into strips of construction
paper to create a large realistic-looking "matchbook", which inspires
some very creative illustrations!
Okay, we finished those today,
so starting tomorrow, I'm turning over a new leaf, and I'll send in a summary of
our day's literacy activities daily! Stay tuned....
November 13
How's our project going? I hope the other teachers have lots of literacy
activities to share, because I don't: we don't learn anything in my class, we
just play all the time...
But seriously, this week we are
illustrating handmade "matchbook" books, adding a new fire safety rule
each day. Tomorrow's Show and Tell is "Something to do with fire
safety", and it's always interesting to see what children bring, and hear
how they justify their choices. On Thursday, we visit a fire station.
Most of the children can sign their
name independently now, though a few still use name cards. Many of them read
each other's names quite well, but some are still looking at first letters only,
and a couple seem to be just counting the letters, so they think
"Brad" says "Mark".
I'm surprised to see how much writing
there is on the drawings they tack to the walls, and they're getting pretty good
at remembering to put their names on, too!
Please let me know what else you need
from me, and I'm going to try to send you stuff more often!!!
Teresa (a.k.a. "Miss T")
December 15th, 2000
Well, we didn't do much out of the ordinary
for literacy this week. We added to our list of December happenings, leading to
a discussion about why I use a different colour for each idea and not for
each word. Eventually they will have a fairly clear understanding of the
concepts "word" and "sentence". Right now I'm using the term
"idea" to refer to each complete unit of thought, but later in the
year I'll begin saying "sentence" instead.
I moved the old month poems to a new spot
on the wall, and that has generated renewed interest in reading them. Even
children who don't usually pay attention to that sort of thing have been making
comments like "Hey, there's September way up there!"
Following a reading of The Night
Before Christmas, we copied the words "Santa Claus" into our
writing books, and illustrated accordingly.
Other than that, we've been busy making
gifts and decorations for Christmas. It's hard to believe it's already here!
December 7th, 2000:
This week, the children were
excited to discover all the December things in Calendar Corner, as they are each
new month. There's a new banner, new calendar numbers, new pictures about the
month saved from old calendars, and a fresh, clean, empty sheet of chart paper
labeled "December", ready to fill with this month's happenings!
Some of them are noticing that the
days on the school calendar are being crossed off with 2 different colours. This
is how I introduce the concept of patterning. Later, we start to look for
patterns everywhere, even in words.
Christmas books we've enjoyed so far
include:
Dr. Seuss's original How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Jan Brett's Christmas Trolls
Marcus Pfister's Wake Up, Santa Claus!
Cassandre Maxwell's Bright Star, Bright Star, What Do You See?
and
Aoki/Gantschev's Santa's Favourite Story
Today we went on a field trip to Lethbridge's Sir Alexander Galt Museum. The
children each made a tin foil ornament, dipped a coffee filter snowflake in
colours, and decorated gingerbread cookies. Vocabulary was expanded by the words
"museum", "pioneer", and "old-fashioned".
I have a P.S.III student from
the U. of L. starting with us in January. As an intern, she will take over much
of the teaching as she gets a taste of what it's like to be "in
charge". Yesterday she and I met after school to discuss the program and
how we think we can best manage everything for everyone's benefit: hers, the
children's, and mine. We decided to do a lot of the planning together, and will
probably do some team teaching as well. This is a very exciting development! And
best of all, Diane would like to come to kindergarten for the next two weeks to
get to know the children and familiarize herself with the basic routine. This
means an extra pair of hands and eyes for all the special Christmas activities:
yahoo!
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