Peek at My Week (Week 4)

Hello everyone?  How many of you have been doing schoolwork while watching your favorite team play?  I don't know about you all, but I am so very glad football is back.  My team doesn't play today, so I've been catching up on a TV show I've been very curious about.  You may have heard of it, it's called 'The Blacklist'?  Anywho, I remember one of my team mates talking about it last year and have seen a lot of talk about it this year, so I've decided to give it a try.  I told myself that I can start watching Season 1 as soon as I finish this blog post, and that I also must cut out my laminating while I do so.  Not a bad compromise for a Sunday, right?  :-)

Here are my plans for the week.  The first page is what we have planned for the morning and the second page is what we have planned for the afternoon.

During ELA we focus on a lot of skills.  We will ask and answer questions about key details in a text, and this week we will be using non-fiction texts about character traits, such as respect and responsibility.  Our school subscribes to an AWESOME online digital resource library, which is Captstone Digital's PebbleGo databases.  Click <here> to go read more about this awesome program, including pricing and availability.  The non-fiction online books that we can access through this program are wonderful.  Not only will the program read the text to the students but they can learn more by clicking on highlighted words and various text features.  Since the text is read by the computer, students can use headphones at the computer center during Listen to Reading portion of Daly 5!!

For Word Study we are focusing on the letters/sounds of /d/ and /t/, as well as continuing to work on our ability to identify and create rhyming words.  We use a lot of nursery rhymes for these activities, and I am always AMAZED at how many of my dragons have never ever heard any of these rhymes.  It always makes us, as a team, want to find as many examples out there as we can to introduce to our littles!!

During all of our small group times this week we will be administering portions of the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA) and the Emerging Literacy Survey (ELS), so the majority of our instruction from now until we finish will be held during Whole Group, which is when we meet together on the carpet in front of the SMART Board.

In Math this week we will be focusing on the numbers 1-5 during Number Talks and Math with Self and Math with Someone Else time, and we will also continue working on our Number of the Day activities.  Monday marks Day 13 with our kindergarteners, so during NotD this week we will focus on #13-17.

Remember that our team teaches Social Studies for two days and Science for two days.  The elementary school students in our district have early dismissal every Wednesday at 2:00.  The teachers remain at school for professional development trainings, school/staff meetings, and team planning sessions.

For Social Studies this week, we will be finishing up our Monster School Rules books.  This is an idea from

The last page we need to make is 'Helping Hands', and then we are going to practice reading them to each other and modeling the rules.  For the first few months of kindergarten, we spend A LOT of time working on our rules, so I love this book because they can keep it in their book bins and read it again and again!!

During Science we are going to continue our study of trees by focusing on leaves.  We will discuss the different shapes of leaves and how those shapes are adapted to help the trees survive in their environment.  We are going to read Leaf Jumpers by Carole Gerber and then head outside to find as many different types of leaves as we can.  When we come back inside we will try to sort them based on their shapes!

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into my week!  Please click on the image below to go to Mrs. Wills' page where she is hosting her Peek at My Week linky party!!  I really love to see all the different ways teachers set up their plans and deliver instruction during the week.  I'm really glad she is hosting this linky, how fun right??!!

What are you going to be focusing on this week?  I'd like to throw in some name recognition and writing practice, plus introduce Word Work and Listen to Reading for Daily 5, and Math with Self and Math with Someone for the Daily 3.  I'm hoping I can find the time!!!  :-)  I hope that all of you have an incredibly wonderful week!!!