My week… detailed!

Hey there!  So today was the 3rd day of school and it was fabulous!!  I can tell we are going to have a great year.  They now know how to stand quietly, walk in a line, raise their hands, and they have all mastered writing their names!  I LOVE Kindergarten!  Shh! We better keep how fabulous it is a secret or the others will be trying to trade with us! 🙂

It was totally my fault to give you plans without any details!  So, here it is really detailed…. you can skim and I won’t be offended! 🙂

7:55- Students come in the classroom, sit at their tables, I call students over 2-3 at a time to give me their folder & put their backpacks away in the hallway.  I then quickly take attendance and lunch count {our students now have a choice for their lunch so this all new}

8:05- I call tables down to the carpet for Calendar.  We talk about the date, today, yesterday, tomorrow, weather, season, days in school {we keep straws, place value chart, and place fish into the fish bowl poster for days in school}.  We then sing the days of the week, months of the year, and the pledge.  I am eventually going to start the Calendar Books I purchased from Growing Kinders!

8:15  This is our opening for our reading series.  It is filled with quick but effective mini lessons.  The beginning of year we start with rhyming and phonological awareness activities.  We end the year with substitution and blending. 

8:25 Restroom

8:35  Reader’s Workshop: This is also covered in our reading series.  We have a read aloud story on Mondays, Big Book on Tuesdays, 2 decodable readers for Wednesday & Thursday and Fridays we have poems.  The start of the series in which we are on right now calls for a poem/song read aloud and 2 concepts {letter names, names, book handling, rhyming, etc}

8:55-9:55 Daily 5- Reading Groups.  After Daily 5 is up and running I will be meeting with 4 reading groups each day at 12-14 minutes each.  Right now we are establishing Daily 5 Routines.  I am following the 5 week slow start to the Daily 5.  We will spend one week on each Daily 5’s {read to self, read to someone, work on writing, word work, and listen to reading}  We will continue to build stamina with read to self during each of the weeks.  Today we first talked about the 3 ways to read a book {read the pictures, read the words, and retell a known story}  We also discussed building stamina and how it takes practice, practice, practice! We brainstormed the Read to Self I-chart.  Under the word students we have: read quietly, get started right away, stay in one spot, and build stamina. I then had a student come up and model how to do read to self!  We then had the chance to practice- we made it to the 3 minutes with only 1…”I’m done!”  Very good!! 🙂  Next week we will move on to read to someone, but still keep building stamina each day.

9:55-10:30 Today and tomorrow I am using lessons from the Meacham learning website.  Wednesday-Friday I will doing lessons from DeeDee Wills and Deanna Jump’s Writing through the year unit.  My reading series writing will start in about 2 weeks and we will move back and from that along with Writing through the year.

10:30-11:30 Restroom, Lunch, Recess

11:30-12:00 Tiger Time {this will eventually be our grade level intervention time}  We will begin grouping & switching students in a month or so.  Right now we are working on skills that are new to a lot of Kindergarten students.  Today and tomorrow we are working with how to safely use our scissors and then we will move onto strokes.  Strokes are a vital component to teach before you really get into a lot of letter formations.  To a student slant down, slant down, across can be quite confusing!  This week I will introduce the stroke by “moving to the stroke.”  I will have the students stand up and we will use BIG motions to make the stroke.  If we are going down I will remind them to start above their head and move down towards their belly buttons.  BIG  motions are great for the brain.  We will then move to these fabulous stroke cards.  I got them {here} for FREE! oh yeah!  I will begin by having the students trace with their fingers the stroke, we will then move onto dry erase markers.  I have laminated my stroke cards!  We end by working on stroke practice pages.

I will continue on with my afternoon plans tomorrow & I’m very sorry for any typos- it’s past my bedtime… have a great Tuesday and if you’re down south please stay safe… you are in my prayers!