Beautiful Faces

Dear Kindergarten Friends,

Thank you so much for filling our classroom with laughter, questions, drawings and writing, with books, learning, smiles, thinking, excitement, and so much more! You are amazing, growing learners that make me smile.

Your beautiful self-portraits have really made our classroom brighter. Thank you for sharing them for a bit.

Mrs. Rider

This free scrapbook personalized with Smilebox

Puzzled Pigeons

Check out our Mo Willems inspired PIGEONS:

Hot Dog Party!!

Hot Dog Party!!

We celebrated the students’ hard work and amazing drawing and writing pieces with a special hot dog party.

Over the last 2 weeks we have studied the work of Mo Willems. His books make us laugh- a lot. Pigeon, one of his main characters, LOVES hot dogs and having a hot dog party is near the top of his "Things I Want" list. We decided there was no better way to celebrate our writing and end our Mo Willem's Author Study, than with a hot dog party! The students enjoyed creating silly hot dogs, sharing their writing portfolio, and eating hot dogs, of course!

More information about Mo Willems can be found on his website:

www.mowillems.com

Enjoy the highlights of our party in this slide show:

Digital slideshow created with Smilebox

Zoologists at Work

Mike, a zoologist, from the Cincinnati Zoo visited our classroom last week. He brought a Great Horned Owl and a Python for the students to observe. The students learned how their own sense of touch, taste, hearing, smell, and sight compared to these animals.

The children loved being able to observe these animals up close, ask questions, touch the python, and draw and write what they learned in their science notebooks.

We're Going on a Word Hunt...

Last week the students went on a word hunt. They LOVED searching through big books for words they have learned. They filled up our bulletin board within a matter of minutes. I loved watching the students' excitement and pride as they read and wrote words they knew. Way to go word hunters!

Read to Self

Check out my amazing kindergarten friends:

Free picture slideshow personalized with Smilebox

They are practicing part 1 of The Daily Five: Read to Self.

I love listening in to the children as they “shop” for books, comment on the pictures, read the words, retell the story, check the end papers, make connections, find star words, laugh out loud, and so much more.

Way to go, friends! I am so proud of each and every one of you!

Have you checked your endpapers lately?

This summer I attended the Lakota Literacy View. This was a three-day professional development workshop on teaching Reading and Writing- an opportunity I simply could not resist! Spending time learning from Lester Laminack and Ann Marie Corgill was thrilling! (If you teach writing in the primary grades, you MUST READ Ann Marie’s book: Of Primary Importance.) As I watched video clips from Ann Marie’s classroom I was amazed at the rich language that her young first graders were using as they shared teaching points from their writing conferences. I challenged myself right then to always use every opportunity to teach the authentic terms that writer’s use as they brainstorm, write, edit, and publish books.

One such opportunity came as I read Little Pea on the very first day of school. As I opened the book I pointed out the beautiful endpapers that were lime green and covered with hundreds of little peas. Well, I am thrilled to report that in the first week and a half of school my 5 and 6 year old students now request that we check out the end pages of each and every book we read, are bringing in books from home with unique endpapers, and creating their own endpapers in Writer’s Workshop.(Wahooo!!) Thank you, Ann Marie, for reminding me that I must always give even my youngest students all of the TOOLS and TERMS they need to grow as writers. Check out some of the special endpapers that the children discovered this week