Aalva Class 2015-2016: Workshops

Hello family and friends!

This week we decided to spend time in all of our workshops. We have three workshops: reading, writing, and math. During reading workshop this week, we invited the children to play letter BINGO. We wanted to spend time focusing on letters because just like in other areas of development, children develop their letter recognition and phonemic awareness at different rates. Our goal is not to force the kids into memorizing something that they are not ready for or interested in. Instead, we work to support them wherever they might be and help them learn in ways that are best suited to each individual need. In order to accomplish this we use BINGO because it’s a great way work on all the different aspects of letters, for example: letter recognition, talking about the sounds of each letter, and coming up with words that start with each letter.

During writing workshop this week we asked everyone “What is your favorite part of school?” We encouraged everyone to draw picture and/or write down their answer to our question. Ms. Rachael and I put on some quiet music and let the kids get to work, encouraging them to put as much detail into their writing as possible! After everyone had finish we gathered around in our circle so that everyone could present their writing to the class. Each child presented their journal to the class and explained what they drew and why it was their favorite part of school. This helps students develop social skill and public speaking skills.

Everyone’s favorite workshop is math! Whenever we tell the class we'll be working in math workshop, everyone screams in excitement! During math workshops we set up the room into stations. Each area will have a different activity that helps to develop a different math skill. Ms. Rachael and I also set up areas with different levels of difficulty. We use a timer to let the kids know when it’s time to switch stations. They can go to any station they choose and make sure that they visit each one. As the students do the activities, Ms. Rachael and I walk around to help with anyone who needs assistance and also to challenge students to do things in a different way.

This month we have also started challenging students more during our morning message time. As you know, each morning we work together as a class to write a morning message on the dry erases board. This is one way for Ms. Rachael I to model reading and writing daily with the children. We have added the writing of the full date (February 18, 2016). The children use the calendar to help figure out each component of the date, week, and month to help spell each word. We have also started asking children to come up and circle site words, punctuation, and letters. This will get them ready for kindergarten when they will be encouraged to write their own morning message with Ms. Becky and Ms. Britney.

As many of you have probably heard we have been waiting on a special delivery in our classroom and it has finally arrived!!! We got our shipment of chicken eggs on Friday and we cannot wait to start our exploration. The eggs will be placed in an incubator for 21 days and we will study them and learn more about chickens as we wait for our little chicks to hatch!!!

Love,

Ms. Michelle

Approaches to Learning:

Demonstrate increasing ability to identify and take appropriate risks in order to learn and demonstrate new skills.
Demonstrate eagerness and interest as a learner by questioning and adding ideas.
Show increasing ability to maintain interest in self-selected activities and play despite distractions and interruptions.
Demonstrate an increasing ability to organize actions and materials in the learning environment.

Social & Emotional:

Demonstrate self direction by making choices among peers, activities, and materials.
Demonstrate confidence by participating in most classroom activities.
Develop strategies to express strong emotion with adult help.

Language & Literacy:

Retell one or two events from a story read aloud.
Begin to identify significant words from text read aloud.
Begin to ask questions about the causes of events they observe or hear about in books.
Explore books independently.
Seek information by looking at texts, signs, and photographs in the classroom.

Mathematics: