1st Week of Work Stations

The first weeks of school have been leading up to this point...we are ready to start work stations!!! Work stations will most likely become one of your child's most favorite times at school, and mine too :)  Each week, students are matched with a station partner(s).  Groups work through the week on 8 different stations.  Each station reinforces previously covered material or collaboration and critical thinking skills.  Here are a few pictures from our first day!

AM (red) Friends

iPad exploration

listening and buddy reading

math

abc word study

abc word study

puzzles, games, and building

writing

creation

PM (blue) Friends

abc word study

writing

math

math

iPad exploration

science sorting

listening and buddy reading

puzzles, games, and building

creation

Many stations are differentiated or have more than one choice for the students.  They have 25 minutes to complete their station work, and may work on more than one activity during that time.  Students are not permitted to leave their station until the timer goes off.  Then, it's clean up time!  Once students are comfortable with the routine of stations and station expectations, we will begin guided reading groups.  During this time, I will pull small groups to work on reading skills.  I am so excited to get started!

We're Going On a Nature Hunt

The weather is starting to change.  As a matter of fact, today is the first day of Fall!  As we move into cooler weather, changes will occur outside.  Before the weather turns for good, it was important to get outside and explore nature - living and non-living.  I asked Mrs. Smith if her class would like to join us for our nature hunt.  We thought this would be a great opportunity for the students to work with someone new and make new friends - we were right!  The students had so much fun!!  Each student from my class was paired with a student from Mrs. Smith's class.  Then, they were given clipboards and dry erase markers with nature scavenger hunts attached.  Off they went to explore the school courtyard and check off their lists.

AM (red) Friends

PM (blue) Friends

Did I mention we had a ton of fun??!! To quote a student from my AM class, "I think this was awesome!".  I hope we can meet up with Mrs. Smith's friends again soon!

We Take Care of....

Recently, we created our classroom rules.  Students came up with a lists of "No's" for school.  The list included ideas like, "No running, No hitting, No interrupting, No throwing our books," and so on.  The next day, we changed our rules to sound more positive - "Walking feet, Keep your hands to yourself, Raise your hand, and Hand books to each other" replaced all the negative sounding "NO'S!!".  Then, we grouped the rules into 3 categories - rules about ourselves, rules about each other, and rules about our environment.  We talked about how to make our rules more simple and easy for us to remember.  Instead of having tons of rules, we ended up with 3.

We Take Care of Ourselves.

We Take Care of Each Other.

We Take Care of the Environment.

After discussing and creating our rules, students made a promise to follow the rules this school year.  Our promise was made with us signing our hand prints.  

Once all hand prints were signed, they were posted around the rules in the classroom as a reminder for us this school year!  :)

Exploration

Although many of the tools in our classroom are familiar to all students before kindergarten begins, the first few weeks of school are spent exploring the tools and discussing how to take care of them.  Students worked with their table partners to rotate between exploring puzzles, games, blocks, and pattern blocks.  This was such a fun day!

AM (red) Friends

PM (blue) Friends