Launching Reading Workshop

A main component of our kindergarten curriculum is a strong literacy program.  Literacy development covers a broad range of skills that overlap and build upon one another to strengthen children's ability to read and write for many purposes.  

A balanced approach to literacy instruction includes four main components: Interactive Read Aloud with Accountable Talk, Reading Workshop, Writing Workshop and Word Work.  This post covers the introduction or what we call the "launching" of Reading Workshop as a part of our daily routine. Among the many resources I use, a bulk of my Reading Workshop is based upon the work of Lucy Calkins and her team of researchers at Teachers College Reading and Writing Project in NYC. I was fortunate to be a student for two graduate classes by one of Lucy's co-authors over the last two summers and have chosen to add her reading program this year to the array of instructional strategies we use at PPS.  

Reading Workshop not only gives students tools for reading independently, but also aims to build their self-confidence as they work with challenging texts.  By giving children lots of opportunities to read and the tools to do so, we begin to build life-long readers and learners.

Children learn to sit independently and self-select books that meet their interests.  In the lower portion of this photo one can see a typical "anchor chart" or guide which children can refer to during and after a reading lesson.  Each day our anchor charts grow with simple pictorial reminders about the day's lesson and the tool they learned.  I hang the anchor charts around the room so children can refer to them daily.

Reading Workshop began with reading non-fiction books that had many illustrations, offering ways children could talk about what they read and read to a partner.  In the beginning of the year, their reading encompasses reading the illustrations and asking questions about what they see.

When we read with a partner, we sit side by side (elbow to elbow, knee to knee), place the book in between and see-saw read, taking turns back and forth.

Richly illustrated non-fiction books about animals, the earth, and plants, strongly engaged children in the reading behaviors I taught daily.  Its fun to read alone, but as this class discovered, it's even more fun to read with someone else!

Readers share "wow" pages with partners, commenting and asking questions to learn more. 

Reading workshop moves children seamlessly through reading independently to reading with a partner to learn.  When reading with a partner it's important to "add a pinch of you" which is one's opinion, prediction, or connection they make when reading a text.  This further's one's comprehension and ability to ask what they author's purpose is and/or what the characters may be thinking or doing.  

I was so pleased to observe the ease with which this class reads independently and with a partner, a foundation for introducing them to reading joyfully.

Social Studies: Holidays

Thanksgiving provided us with a natural learning opportunity for studying holiday traditions, especially the history that forms holiday traditions and how such holidays are celebrated by different people in our present day time.  In our room, a favorite activity this year was the making of a Thanksgiving book titled Turkey, Turkey What Do You See? based on the familiar text structure in Eric Carle's book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?  Our book recounts the main historical events that define how Thanksgiving began.  Each page in the book was a culminating activity to a history lesson explaining the actions of people who lived many years ago, but whose actions affect how we celebrate the holiday today. 

Each page in the book is cut and glue paper design... after an initial step by step review, students had to gather their own supplies, cut each shape and assemble the parts.  Best of all, students had to share materials, solve problems and help one another as they completed each page.

We read non-fiction and literary non-fiction titles to support our learning.

Happy and engaged learners!

Oh, how they love to glue... learning to use just enough glue, too!

Once the book was assembled, students added details and words with markers.

As we studied the lives of native americans and pilgrims, students were surprised to learn of the similarities and differences in how children lived daily life compared to their own present day life. They were shocked to learn the pilgrims children did not go to school, rather had to help with the chores of daily living.

Pine cone turkeys: we made this art activity during math, focusing on shapes and patterns.

More turkey math: they played several rounds of the turkey drawing game with partners.  We hope you got to try playing this game at home, too!

Life Cycles: Fall, Trees, Seasons, Apples

The Fall Season provided a strong foundation for our science focus on Life Cycles... not just individually, but life cycles as they happen simultaneously.  We studied how the change of seasons brought about the life cycle changes in trees, butterflies and apples.  In this way we developed an understanding of how the seasons affect people, animals and plants.  Each has a life cycle that is unending as they move through the seasons and seek what they need... warmth, food, and a way to grow.  We will follow these life cycles through the present season of winter and study how people, plants and animals adapt to winter conditions.

Identifying three main types of trees that are familiar to our landscape... sugar maple, evergreen and oak tree.  We found evidence of each and recorded our findings.

As evergreen trees drop their fruit (pine cones) other animals may depend on that food for survival. We found pine cones with their seeds eaten.

Budding scientists recording their observations.

We learned how chlorophyll covers up the other colors in sugar maple trees.  When it dried up in the fall, the other colors are revealed.

Demonstrating how chlorophyll dries up to reveal the colors of the fall season.

Our first science experiment recording sheet: How many seeds will be in an apple.  This experience lays the foundation for our upcoming winter experiments revolving around properties of snow.  We will complete 8-10 experiments with snow using this same recording sheet.

Our class trees represents the changing seasons... apples with a few bites missing!

Making delicious apple sauce.  Peeling, cutting, measuring and combining ingredients.

Sugar Maple Tree Journal: We adopted a sugar maple tree in the school yard outside of Mr. Shepard's classroom.  We are observing this tree through the season and recording our findings, noting how the seasons affect the tree.

What season is it and how do we know?  With each season we record what we learn about it, making sure we have proof... such as through literature we have read... about our findings and facts.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!  We eased back into our routines yesterday, acknowledging the start of 2016, the cycle of the months of the year and how they coincide with the cycle of the seasons.  We certainly felt the cold temperature yesterday, recording a "very cold" reading on our weather graph for the first time.  The new year also gives me a nudge to catch up on some blog posts of olde... all this week I will recap November and December's curriculum so that you can see it's flow into January and the connections to our current lesson focus.  Look for those to start later today.  Lots of great photos, too! Mrs. Belaski 

Callirobics For Kids

We are continually finding ways to strengthen kids fine motor skills, especially for forming and writing letters with efficiency.  In our class we use a program called Callirobics For Kids for that purpose.  Founded by Liora Laufer, Callirobics is a program that consists of  repetitive handwriting exercises set to music with straight lines and curves.  The music helps to relax children and adds rhythm to what can be more tedious penmanship exercises.  We repeat these exercises for at least four days in between letter writing practice to build stamina and a flow for writing and improved eye-hand coordination.  

When your child brings home each exercise, have them repeat it at home... try with a dry erase marker, crayon or pencil and paper, making the exercise on their own without the aide of the worksheet.  Play some calming music...the program uses instrumental music only.  Just a few minutes a day will have dramatic effects on your child's hand strength and accurate flow of letter strokes. When your child has fluid writing movements, their ability to make letters quickly has a positive effect on their work production in Writer's Workshop.  A child who can form letters with flow and facility will concentrate more on the content of their writing, not on the struggle to form letters which interrupts their creativity.  After Thanksgiving we will move away from narrative writing and toward a new genre of writing.  Handwriting flow will help them to focus on that style of writing with more ease.   

Phonological Awareness

Literacy development spans a broad array of skills elementary school.  In kindergarten we plan lessons that target specific aspects of literacy which can support reading, writing and word study. You may hear teachers refer to a child's "phonological awareness" and it's role in their overall literacy development.  Here is how we approach growing a child's phonological awareness so far this year.

Phonological awareness is an ability to consciously notice, identify, and manipulate individual sounds or sound structures of oral language.  These may include parts of words, syllables and individual speech sounds and units of sound made by more than one letter.  Individual sounds in isolation are called phonemes.  These are the /b/ in bat and ball. Young children naturally play with sounds through oral language play; often "dancing" with word play, rhyme and alliteration.  When we ask children to consciously take apart that word play and purposely change sounds or units of sounds they are building phonological awareness skills.

In our first trimester we focused heavily on individual letter sounds, the beginning sound in a word, changing the beginning sound in a word to make a new one, rhyme recognition and being able to produce rhymes. 

Identifying initial letter sounds in words and labels for objects.

As we learn individual letter sounds, it is critical that children know the name of letter and its sound as two different aspects of a written letter.  Recognizing lowercase letters can be more challenging, especially amongst d, b, p and q!

Movement songs with rhymes and initial letter sounds help engage children in oral language play. Connecting sound play to the name of a letter and it's written form in handwriting instruction.

Dictation: At least once a week we practice writing the letter to match a dictated sound.

Poems and songs with rhymes help build oral language play.  In our word work center there are materials for individual practice with phonological awareness skills.

Separating individual sounds, syllables, and words as they create a full sentence.  We also practice counting words in sentences and pointing once under each word with a reading finger.  This skill connects reading and writing as kids say a word over and over, stretching all the sounds and recording them all to create one word.  We are learning the importance of capitalizing the first word and placing a period at the end of a sentence!

Four Winds

This year we are fortunate to have Four Winds taught by parents in our classroom!  Four Winds is a hands-on natural science program that excites children to explore the world around them beginning with our very own schoolyard at PPS. The program uses rich outdoor activities and materials to guide children to explore, ask questions and make discoveries about the natural world.  When young children understand their environment they begin to see how they are connected to the our precious earth.  From there they begin to learn that they have a critical role in caring for and protecting it.

Each year a different topic is chosen for our school and outlined by the Four Winds Foundation.  http://www.fwni.org/   Our school district has two coordinators who organize the program in all the schools.  They set up trainings, gather materials and ensure all classrooms have parent volunteer teachers to carry out the lessons.  The parent teachers attend a monthly training sessions, review teaching materials and videos and bring the lessons to our classroom each month.  

In September we were fortunate to have Rory and Aya's mom begin the program with a lesson about life cycles and metamorphosis.  That lesson dovetailed perfectly with our study of the life cycle of a caterpillar and the cycle of the four seasons.  In October Aya's mom taught us all about traveling seeds and inspired us to observe and compare different seed and how they begin to grow new plants.  Each lesson begins with a (very popular) puppet show, then allows for hands exploration and outside time.  In the weeks that follow, I try to follow up on the concepts they learned as well.  We give thanks to our Four Winds teaching parents for their time and commitment to enriching our science program.

The opening puppet show targets vocabulary and how plant and animal life are affected.  We have to listen carefully to the words as they explain some really big concepts in a kid-friendly way.

Looking for living organisms in leaf matter.

Capturing bugs just long enough to explore them, then releasing them back to their habitat.

Traveling Seeds Puppet Show... Learning how animals, wind and water move seeds... and how important the process is to our environment.

Even humans move seeds... who doesn't love blowing those milkweed seeds?!

Finding and comparing seeds; recording our findings.