A Peek at Week #4

We are slowly but surely progressing through the first weeks of first grade. Thankfully, mostly of my little ones have realized that school is here to stay - their game faces are on and they are ready to learn. Now if I could just get everyone on board with this learning thing we're trying to do, that would be fantastic!

Speaking of fantastic - it's Sunday and I'm sitting here in bed with my two kitties. No Sunday anxiety. Praise the heavens for the little gift known as Labor Day. It could not have come at a better time.

By the end of week three, we've built our writing stamina up to almost 20 minutes. I am seriously so, so impressed with these kids! Now if I could only have more time in the day to work on their handwriting (yikes). Our district does not explicitly teach it and I have some very interesting penmanship coming over from kindergarten.

Also on my to-dos for this week is to introduce the overall structure of our reader's workshop. My workshop spells out READ which stands for Read with Technology, Enjoy a Book, At Your Seat, and Discuss with Teacher. The technology component is new this year and I can't wait to see how it goes. I am also going to try out book baggies for each individual student where they can self-select 2-3 books to accompany 2-3 books I have selected for them at their just-right level.

I am most nervous about introducing the "At Your Seat" component. This includes everything from hands-on centers to fun printables that incorporate a variety of reading skills. It was very rough during the first few months of school last year - I have such a huge reserve of activities and the kiddos come in really lacking the independence needed to pick up an activity and tackle it without teacher guidance. 

Short /e/ makes its entrance this week. We will also spend time practicing the word work activities that I have already introduced to the students. This has worked out so much better than it did last year (hooray for little teacher victories!)

Next up for math is understanding subtraction. This was a tricky topic for some of my kiddos last year who still struggled with understanding addition. We are really going to dive into my Fun with Number Bonds pack to give my visual learners a chance to really see the part-part-whole relationship!

Last but not least, we will wrap up our living/nonliving unit of study. Students will get together in groups and create posters using images found in magazines. This activity was a huge hit last year and I am so excited to introduce it to my students this week!

Alrighty, you know the drill - head on over to Mrs. Wills' Kindergarten and share your week with us. Huge shout out to Deedee for keeping us all accountable :)