Well, not quite. My little ones this year are having a hard time doing just that, but hey, it's only been a week and a half, right? Still, I miss them being trained able to anticipate what we're doing next!
This week, we continued some of our back to school activities in creating these cute lunchboxes for Cafeteria Expectations from Rowdy in Room 300 that she posted as a freebie. We also did Miss Kindergarten's "School is Cool" kids (another freebie--LOVE those freebies!). I think they look pretty nifty in our hallway! :)
I love displaying our work in the hallways! :) Maybe I could work on my administrator putting a bulletin board out there for me! :)
OH! Started my BUILD centers this week! They were a HIT with students and, since my students are not very independent (yet), that was one of the main parts of their seatwork while we rotated math groups. It made a big difference in the atmosphere of the room from past years. No more students off task and wandering around, not sure what to do or what center to choose. I also didn't have a large number of kids playing one center with someone being left out. It really helped with behavior and teamwork!
This week, we are adding the "Number of the Day" book to their independent time. They had trouble with this at the beginning, but after a week of working with it as a group, I think they're ready to try it on their own! I had done these books in years past and gotten away from them, but decided I like these much better than Investigations' version (shh!). Here's a sample of the first book:
I put two on a page then cut it in half. I copy 10 pages for each student, so they have a book of "20." For some of the templates, I copy more and some I copy less, depending on how much they need help with the concept. If you click on the picture, it should take you to the Google Doc page. I hope it works okay...I'm still learning how to do this! If you're wondering, the "number of the day" coincides with how many days we've been in school, so it ties into our calendar lesson each day.
So, all in all, it was a pretty good week. We continued discovering nouns and sang our songs about punctuation (I wish I could remember the name of the book I copied these from years ago, but sadly, I cannot...other than it had a wide variety of topics of songs). We have our PALS Reading Assessment coming up this Friday. I've done an informal evaluation (running record) and right now I have four reading groups...we do Guided Reading Levels and they are (literally) E, F, G, and H (the equivalent of PrePrimer, Primer, and First). Sigh. No, I can't combine them together. But, this post is long enough, so let's just say my little dependent kids have "snack" as one of their rotations! :) Between that and Raz Kids and Literacy Centers, I'm able to keep some sanity! Come September 11, we'll start our reading rotations so that they'll also get "Reading Lab" and "Title I."
Wow, this was a long post...and varied...I'll try to do better next time! Thanks if you've gotten this far! Oh, one last question.......does anyone do the "AMC" math? We're trying to fit that into our Investigations but other than having the books for the testing, I haven't had any formal training on it (I'm currently in the begging stages with my administrator, since I know of someone who went to the training and it sounds really cool!). Thanks!
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