Traveling Suitcases

I have recently put together traveling suitcases and sent them on their way to be shared with students and parents. They have benn going around for about a week now and the studnets are very eager to get a turn. Due to the fact that there are 24 kids in our class I decided to use three bags. Each of these bags has the same notebook with the same directions, only different books.

My focus for these bags were for children to spendsome quality time reading with their families and to also build on comprehension strategies. In each of the bags there is a book related to social skills. I figured that these books are interesting, fun to read, adn every child can connect in some way. The directions ask that the student reads the book with someone and then they write down conncetions they had to the story. They are to write three different types:1. Text to self 2. Text to text 3. Text to world. There are descriptions of each type of connection.

So far, I have found that children have the most trouble with connecting to the world. This is something that seems abstract to young children although I hope we can build on this.

It has been fun to read childrens connections and see how excitied they are when they get picked to take a bag home! I do use popsicle sticks to decide so that it is fair. I am going to send the bags aaround so that each child gets to read each of the 3 books. This was a suggestion from a student! Happy Reading!

Kyla :)

Happenings

Hello everyone!
Everything is going great in our classroom. We have finished Sir Fartsalot! The children really onjoyed it! We continue to learn about wolves, plants, and use fairytales to understand schema, detail, and characters in a story! I don't really have any concerns right now, just getting assignments done! Oh well actually I do have one!
I am teaching the kids about plants. They now understand the whole process of leaves giving the tree food through water, sunlight, and air. They are observing a tree outside of our window and watching to see when all the leaves fall off. They all made predictions for this. Well I found an experiment in the book that we got from ASD in our science kits. We were to take a branch from a tree put one in water in the sun and one without water. Observe and watch the changes. Well the one without water was supposed to change color and die. The only problem is that they are both dying! The experiemnt is not working. The troubles teachers have! What to do now..... I will keep you updated!!!
We are starting our year long unit with the preschoolers tomorrow. we willbe heading over to Tanaina to show them what we know about leaves. it shall be exciting!!!

Week of August 31st

This has been a great week. I truly enjoy being here! The kids seem so eager to learn and they are cooperating so nicely. It is wonderful to see them so ecxited about learning! We continued to read "Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger". This children really enjoy this story and look forward to hearing it. We read it at the end of day just before it's time to go home. It is a chapter book with some difficult words in it. When we stumble upon these words we werite them down, read the sentences over and over to try and figure out what they mean, and then look them up in the dictionary to put on our word wall.For those of you who have never heard of this story and are wondering what it is here is a great link that offers reviews.
www.commonsensemedia.org/.../Sir-Fartsalot-Hunts-Booger.htm
Have a great weekend, see you next week!!!
Kyla :)

Second Week of School

I have thoroughly enjoyed my first week here at Polaris. The children are great and Carol and I have formed a great relationship. I really enjoy observing Carol's lessons, and I am going to need a large notebook to keep all my notes in! I am picking up on differnt strategies that Carol uses and they all seem to work great.
For my first literacy project I would like to start weekend journals with the children in our class. They will each recieve a notebook that will go home with them every weekend. They will write in the journal about their week at school or how their weekend is going. I will then take the journals and write back to every child while correcing their spelling and/or grammar errors. I will also commment on their journal entry as well as tell them a little something about myself. I want this project to continue throughout the year and I can watch their writing develop. I just hope that everyone participates!!
I have not put a picture of the welcome bulletin board up yet. This is because, as principal in training, Carol needs to be out of the classroom Monday afternoon and Tuesday all day. I came up with an activity to do with our students that involves creating the board together. I will post a picture when we are done. I am lookng forward to it, and we will see how it goes!

Kyla :)

First Day of School

Today was the first day of school! It was very exciting. I had mixed feelings about what to expect today. People were asking me yesterday "How do you feel about tomorrow"?. This question puzzled me because I didn't know what to expect. I have barely spent time in an elementary school and my previous experience has been preschool. I thought I would be more nervous than I really was. I even led my first group activity, sharing bags. It went very well. The children were all very respectful and they made me feel very welcome.It was such a great experience and I am very eager to dive into the year ahead of me.