Recap of Week 14 and Peek at my Week 15

Hey there! Can we just first say…how is it already Thanksgiving? Okay, now we can carry on 🙂 I just can’t believe how far in the school year we already are! This post will be a recap of last week for me and a two-day Thanksgiving week. WOO! Tell me that I am not the only one in school this week? We just go Monday and Tuesday and I am actually kind of excited because we will be doing so many fun things! There is just something about not having to follow a set “plan” that makes me so excited….I have plenty of things ready for us to do…and we are going to go with the flow! 🙂

Alright get started already lady…here are my plans from last week!

Our close read for the week was Scarecrow by Cynthia Rylant. This book is one of those that you do not realize how much substance it truly has until you look at it with “close read” eyes!

Our essential questions….

Our main focus throughout the week was…How does the scarecrow feel about his job! It was so awesome seeing the kids talk and think through this question. Never in the book does it say that the scarecrow likes his job, but they were able to listen closely and hear the clues that told them that!

Vocabulary….

Our cumulative writing went along with our essential question. So, the students wrote their opinion on whether the scarecrow liked their job or not. This adorable scarecrow craft comes from First Grade Blues.

Aren’t they just the cutest??

My sister’s class made these little cutie patootie scarecrows from Miss Kindergarten!

We are still plugging along with KinderPhonics! This week we talked about the letters Rr and Dd. The kids never cease to amaze me with their drawings…I loved “row” and our dinosaur is a ferocious looking dude! If you follow a big-box curriculum program you can easily combine KinderPhonics into your program. For example, Journeys has alphafriends…I just introduce the alphafriend when I introduce the letter. So, this week we also met Reggie Rooster and Dudley Duck. I use my KinderPhonics lessons for the phonemic awareness, focus on handwriting, and an emphasis on the sound of the letters.

When I introduce each new letter I also read the Alphatales letter book! The kids LOVE these and they help to inspire them for our letter-sound poster. I think it’s important to remember that there will never be just ONE program that works for our students. We must be open to know that and willing to express to others that we need the opportunity to bring in other avenues of learning for our students. I don’t think it is fair to my students to only offer them one style of learning…a variety is what they need! So in my classroom I do a KinderPhonics-Alphafriends-Alpatales-Youtube mix!

My favorites Youtube channels for teaching the alphabet!

Now for this week’s two-day plans! We will be reading some favorite Thanksgiving read aloud books during reader’s workshop! In small group I will introducing my new Read and Retell packet! My intervention group is starting digraphs this week! Whoop! The afternoons are filled with LOTS of Thanksgiving fun and our feast on Tuesday.

My kiddos will be doing lots of the fun activities in this packet from A Year of Many Firsts! If you are in the classroom for Thanksgiving week this packet will give you plenty of fun and engaging activities! We will doing the thankful turkey craft, turkey true/false sort and more!

Here is a look at a few other activities we will be working on this week…Handy Turkey handprint, color by number, and our look at how we are the same/different from pilgrim children! All of these activities are found in my November Taking Back Weekends packet.