The Mitten Tree

Warming Up Winter

The Beal Community is “Warming up Winter” by collecting new gloves, mittens, hats and socks for infants, children, teens and adults. Now that the cold weather is here, the need for these items hasgreatly increased. All items will be donated to local charities and school children in need. Please send donations to school with your child by Friday, December 14th. Thanks in advance for your donations and continued support!

    

                             

Leaf Men, parent conferences, election day, OH MY!

HELLO, blogging world!  I am so sorry it has been so long.  To say my life is hectic is an understatement, but, here I am.  Tonight's post is to let families and other fellow teachers know what has been going on in Room 8.

The kiddos have been working hard.  They earned their tenth Dazzle a week or so ago.  They voted and "Toy Day" won.  The kids were able to bring in their favorite toy to share with the class.  I am so proud of their hard work.  I hope everyone stayed safe during Hurricane Sandy!  I actually got stuck up in New Hampshire, so I ended up taking a personal day on Tuesday.


The past week has been full of learning fun.  We continued to work on our phonemic awareness by talking about syllables and listening for rhyming words.  So far, I have taught these letters.  We use Lively Letters, which trains phonemic awareness and phonics skills. This program turns abstract letters and sounds into “lively" characters by embedding letters into colorful pictures that show students what to do with their mouths when making the sounds. Engaging music, pictures, hand/body cues, oral kinesthetic cues, and mnemonic stories are key features of this powerful, yet fun, program. Students systematically progress from learning isolated letter sounds with picture cues to reading and spelling multisyllable words in books and on paper. The letters we have learned so far are on the left side of the screen.  Ask your child if they can tell you their stories.  

we have been able to start building words because we learned about our SUPER STAR letters. Duh Duh Duh..... VOWELS!  We have been introduced to super star vowel /a/.  We learned that vowels have two sounds, their long sound and their short sound.  We began blending CVC words, such as; tap, bag, fab, etc..  We make real words and "alien" words.  Stay tuned to see which letter I will introduce this week.

On Fun Friday, we read the story "Leaf Man" by Lois Elhert.  After reading this story, we decided to make our very own Leaf People.  First, we brainstormed the types of nature they should be collecting when we go outside.  We talked about making sure we got materials for eyes, hair, etc.  Then, we ventured outside.  Each student was given a brown bag to collect what they needed for their leaf person.  When we got back inside, we talked about planning out our person before we start glueing.  Here are some pictures of their wonderful work.

Daily 5 literacy and Daily 5 math

Daily 5 at it's best!!!!

The kids have been working really hard on their work stamina.  I have now introduced "Read to Self", "Word Work", "Listen to a Story",  and our latest and greatest, "Work on Writing".  During work on writing, the kids are able to make a card.  Next week I will introduce List Writing.  We have been busy learning about our lively letters.  So far, I have introduced p/b, t/d, f/v and k/g.  Ask your son or daughter about these letter characters and see if he/ she is able to tell you the letter story..  This week we have been working with syllables.  We counted how many syllables we had in our name and we also talked about how syllables are different than letters.  Next week we will dive into Rhyming.  In math, we have begun the process of learning Daily 5 math.  Each child has a "Math Game Binder".  The 5 choices they have for math are; number games, fact games, paper and pencil, math tools and strategy games.  So far we have only learned about math tools, number games, fact games, and paper and pencil.  So, here are some pictures of the kids hard at work

INTRODUCING.... my new FREEBIES page

Hey everyone!  I am introducing my new Freebies page on my blog.  Here I have posted every printable I have created and shared on this blog.  They are all free and all you have to do is click on the one you like and it will bring you to my google docs page.  Download and print for Free!  If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to email me and I will get back to you as soon as I can!

Letter Work on the Interactive Whiteboard

Here is a jpeg of the interactive board I created using Boardmaker Plus.  We are currently working on letter-sound knowledge.  This was used as a whole group mini-lesson.  Each child got a change to come up to the board and drag a picture to the correct sorting area.  When the children touched each picture, it labeled the name of the picture.  If they touched the p or the b, it gave the sound.  They did an awesome job!

Math differentiation

Here are two more "paper and pencil" math activities.  Enjoy.

A new year means new math games!

Hello everyone!

So, school year 2012/2013 has officially started with a bang.  I am teaching a new grade this year, but fortunately I have some experience in that I taught Kindergarten two years ago.  Even with the experience, it is a whole new world.  Last June, my firsties left me, and I could truly call them 2nd graders.  Fast forward to September 2012.  The kids coming into my classroom were about 2 years younger than my old class.  I knew I had my work cut out for me.  Although young, I have an amazing group of 22 Kindergartners.  We are currently working on rules and expectations, consequences and positive reinforcement.  With every new year, comes new and different motivators.  I have taken the requests of my new students and of other teachers, and I have been able to create a handful of "paper and pencil" math Roll and Colors.  So, as always promised.  Here they are for free.  Please feel free to download them and have your children or students enjoy these fun motivating number games.  These games were made for Kindergarten age students, but please use them with whoever you feel will benefit!

Parent Conferences and Sign Up Genius

Introducing SIGN UP GENIUS.  Rewind to 2011.  The last time parent-teacher conferences were coming around, I began to look for my sign up list.  After about 30 min, I started to panic.  I could not find my sign-up sheet anywhere!!!  I had no clue which parent was coming when.  I had no idea what time I was starting and ending.  I had every right to panic.  So, a couple days later, still no sign-up sheet.  I proceeded to email all of my parents, telling them how I have lost this very important document.  I asked them to email me back with the time they signed up for.  For the most part, parents kindly replied and helped me piece together my order.  There were a few however, who were depending on me to remind them what time they signed up for.  So... fast forward to year 2012.  Curriculum Night went flawless, and all the parents who attended, signed up for a conference.  As I cleaned up from the night, i told myself I would put this in such a special spot, that I could never loose it.  Knowing me, however, you know there is no such special spot for me!  So.. intro SIGN UP GENIUS!  This is a wonderful, free resource that lets you create a sign-up sheet. This is a link that is sent to the parents and they can go to my page and click on the time they would like to have a conference.  Knowing that most of my parents already signed up for a conference, I used this as a confirmation of their time.  For the 8 families that did not sign up, they could see the open times that were available, click, and sign up for a conference.  Such a GENIUS idea.  I couldn't possibly ever lose this sign-up!  Thank goodness for technology!

If you are a parent in my classroom and you have not signed up, or you want to confirm your time, please follow this link to my Sign-up Genius page!

Miss Zakar's Parent-Teacher Conference Sign Ups

THEY EARNED 10 DAZZLES!!!!

 CONGRATULATIONS!!! To all the boys and girls in room 8.  I use a whole group behavior management system called Dazzles.  In order to receive a Dazzle, the whole group must be caught doing something good.  This can be following rules or walking quietly in the hall, getting a compliment from another teacher, or showing awesome behavior in the classroom.  Every time I catch them doing the right thing, they receive a dazzle.  When they get 10 dazzles. they are able to have a Dazzle Vote.  Here they learn that majority rules and that if you don't get your choice, that it is no big deal and maybe we will choose your activity next time.  So, the Dazzle Vote took place on Thursday morning.  The votes were in!  They voted to have a movie day!  They were all really excited.  So, I rented The Lorax.  All the kids were super excited.  We watched half of it in the morning and then we were able to watch the rest in the afternoon.  The kids are moving and grooving with getting used to my classroom rules and expectations.  They are so amazing that they have already earned 2 more dazzles.  Now we only have 8 left in order to get another dazzle vote!  I'm confident we will be able to reach 10 dazzles very quickly!

All the children enjoyed the Lorax and we talked about why they were able to watch this movie and what types of behavior I saw that made me give them a dazzle.  We reviewed our rules and decided what we needed to work on as a group to earn more dazzles. 

Stay tuned to see how quickly the kids earn another 10 Dazzles!