Fall

Fall is one of my most favorite times of the year! We have had a busy September on the home front, and in the classroom, and we are so excited that it is feeling like fall in South Carolina!  In our classroom, we have had many opportunities to get to know one another and build our community.  The students have quickly learned our structure and routine, and I have been amazed at the amount of learning that is already taking place. 

During our whole group shared reading lessons, we have learned to identify the parts of a book, how to identify characters and settings, and we are already learning several decoding strategies.  Our students can demonstrate tracking words, and they are able to use pictures and beginning letter sounds to figure out unknown words.  They also learned during the very first week of school that sometimes readers read pictures, sometimes we read words, and sometimes we can retell a familiar story.  During our independent reading time, I am excited to see and hear our students practicing these strategies!

In math, we have worked extremely hard to understand numbers 0 - 10.  In kindergarten, students should not only be able to count numbers in the correct sequence, recognize numerals, and count sets of objects (understand cardinality), but they also must gain a deeper understanding of our number system and how it works.  For example, we need to understand that numbers can be represented in many different ways, and that even if the representations change, the numbers don't.  It is so much fun to see our students working with these numbers and using numbers to solve problems!

I think I have been most amazed by my students' writing this year! Our whole class seems to really LOVE writing, and they are so very quiet and concentrated while working on their independent pieces.  I have students who are writing their own books at home, and bringing them in to share with the class! WOW!!!!!  That makes this teacher's heart SMILE!  We started this year writer's workshop by charting "Who are Writers?" and "What Do They Write?"  We came to the conclusion that we all are writers, and that anything that you say can be written down.  Our students gained confidence from the fact that they are writers from the beginning.  They have had several examples of great writing as we continuously read throughout our day.  Many of our students have shared that they would like to be published authors one day, and I'd say they are well on their way.  So far this year, we have learned to write opinion pieces and we are just beginning to learn to write informational pieces.  Our students have learned how to choose their own topics for writing and have had opportunities to practice making these choices in their journals.  We just published opinion pieces about our favorite candy to display in the hall for others to read.  The students had a lot of fun writing these pieces.  This past week, we spent time learning how to use a circle map (thinking map) to gather our ideas about fall.  I modeled for students how writers might use the circle map to help them write to give information.  During shared writing, our students helped to write one fact sentence using information from the circle map.  After that, our students worked to use the circle map to help them write their own pieces.  They will continue to work on these pieces this week so that we can publish them to display on our October bulletin board.  I hope to include some pictures of their writing to our blog this week, so be sure to check back for examples!

During this month, we have also implemented our Guided Reading groups.  It usually takes me about a month to get routines, structure, and rules established during Literacy Stations so that everyone knows what they should go and what they should be doing.  This month also gives me a chance to assess my students to find out where they are developmentally, and what we need to work on next.  The last two weeks, while my other students were in Literacy Stations working on independent reading and writing activities, I have pulled groups of learners to work on specific skills.  This is one of my favorite parts of our day, and our students love it, too!  These groups change all the time, based on students' needs.  They really enjoy the independent practice of our stations, too! 

In our classroom, we have 4 stations with at least 2 literacy activities in each, that our students rotate through during the week.  One of those 8 activities is working with Mrs. Brooks, our wonderful co-teacher on writing.  My Guided Reading group is a pull-out station.  My students don't rotate to my station, but instead, I am able to pull students with the same need from each of the other stations they are working in.  Our math stations and Guided Math work very similarly.  We have 4 stations with at least 1 math activity that our students rotate through during the week.  One of those 4 activities is working with Mrs. Brooks.  My Guided Math group is a pull-out station.  The major difference between Literacy Stations and Math Stations is that once our students finish their math station work, they may go to free play centers.

By organizing our stations in this way, all of our students work with Mrs. Brooks once each week for reading and once each week for math.  All of our students meet with me two or three days each week for reading, and 3 days a week for math.  This is the third year that we have used Literacy Stations and Math Stations like this in our classroom (where the stations are separate with Literacy in the morning and math in the afternoon), and they continue to be a class favorite!

Our science and social studies lessons so far this year have had us getting to know each other and our communities.  I am excited to start one of our fall themes this week as we introduce apples and how they grow to our students.  One of the science standards for kindergarten students says that they need to understand that all organisms go through stages or a process of life called the life cycle.  Students have so much fun learning during this unit because they have opportunities to explore and use hands-on experiences throughout. 

Whew! September sure has been busy, and it has also been FULL of learning.  We are off to a great start in kindergarten, and it will just keep getting better and better!  My Munchkins are off to great places, today is their day. They are off to great places - off and away!