Peek at My Week (Week 5)

Hello again all!!  First let me say I'm very sorry for not posting in so long...dealing with family stuff as well as the craziness that is the beginning of the year in kindergarten left me plum tuckered out!! I'm going to be trying a lot harder to get regular posts up!!

I know it's getting a bit late, so I won't keep you long.  I am linking up with Mrs. Wills' Kindergarten for her Peek at My Week linky!  This is a really awesome linky where teachers get to link up and share their plans for the week, as well as links to any activities they might be using.  Make sure to go back over to Mrs. Wills' Kindergarten to see who else linked up!!

Here are my plans for the week.  The first picture is the morning, and the second picture is the afternoon. I teach all day kindergarten, so we do all things ELA in the morning and all things Math and Science/Social Studies in the afternoon.

This is what we are planning to do for ELA and Daily 5 this week.  My kinders are working on rhyming words and beginning sounds, and so far this year we have introduced the letters p, b, t, d, k, g.

In Math, we have been focusing on gaining a deeper understanding of the numbers 0-10 as well as how to use a ten-frame and rekenreks.

During Math we are learning how to follow the Daily 3, where we do Math with Self, Math with Someone Else, or Centers.  This week during Math with Self and Math with Someone, my kinders are going to be working on activities from my newest product.  It is a BUNDLE of beginning of the year math activities that focus on the numbers 0-10 as well as color words.  Click on the picture to go check it out in my TPT store!

Don't forget to go over to Mrs. Wills' Kindergarten to see who else has linked up for her Peek at My Week linky!

This week I'm looking forward to getting our first Scholastic Order in!!  My kinders ROCKED it this month and ordered $94 worth of books!!  Woot-woot, love those Bonus Points!!  What is something you are looking forward to this week?

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!!!

Peek at My Week (Week 3): Lesson Plans and Activities

Tomorrow is Monday...the weekend is over.  <sad face>  I start my third week of teaching tomorrow, but it is my first five-day week of the year.  Tomorrow marks Day 8 of kindergarten for us, and I have to admit that things are going REALLY WELL so far!!!  <knock on wood!!>  I'm excited to link up with the ever-amazing Deedee Wills for her Peek at My Week linky party.  It's so much fun to see what other educators and bloggers are doing with their lesson plans and how they spend their week!  Make sure to click on the picture at the end of my post to hop on over to see who else has linked up!!

This is the third week of linking up with Peek at My Week, but it is the first week I've been able to share lesson plans.  At my school there are 4 kindergarten teachers, and we all split up the workload. I am SO VERY GRATEFUL to be able to do this!!  We take turns typing up the weekly plans and creating the daily SMART Board routines.  Isn't it just fabulous to be part of a team??  I haven't been able to watch DeeDee's fabulous video tutorial on how to display one's plans with links to activities, so I'm just going to have to settle for showing you a screen shot of the plans and then providing links to any activities that were used.

This first page shows our morning plans for the week.  During the morning is when we work on calendar and ELA activities, including word study, whole group reading, and guided reading.  As per our contract, our plans must include a daily objective taken from the Common Core, an activity, and how we are going to assess that activity.  The style/format we use is up to us.  My team types them up in a Word template.  We have used the same one for many years, and it works just fine for us!!  :-)

The second page of our weekly plans shows what we do for math, including whole group, guided math groups, number of the day, and number talks.  During the afternoon is also when we attend special and when we have our science/social studies block.  We do two days of science and two days of social studies, since every Wednesday is 2:00 dismissal for all elementary schools in our county.  The students leave at 2, but teachers remain until the end of their duty day.  We use this time for professional development, staff meetings, team meetings, and working in our rooms.  Every Wednesday of the month is designated for something different.

Here are the activities I'm using this week that can be found on TPT.

This activity pack created by Caitlin Clabby of Kindergarten Smiles is AMAZING!!!  We have already used several of the many, many activities provided!  This week we will be working on creating the 'Monster School Rules' book.  Last week we worked on coloring the cover and assembling the pages for the rules of 'Whispering Mouths' and 'Walking Feet'.  This week we will work on the rules 'Listening Ears' and 'Boss of ME!'  That last one is, hands-down, my favorite go-to rule for the entire year.  Whenever one of my kinders runs up to me to tell me what so and so just did/said/etc, I say 'Who are you the boss of?  That's right, you are the boss of YOU and no one else."  Love.

All these week during ELA guided reading groups, we will be working with this little easy reader I made.  It focuses on VERY SIMPLE shapes, color words, number words (for the number of sides of the shapes discussed), and some simple sight words.  We are going to work on reading this book all week, as well as identifying the shapes by their name and number of sides and understanding that a shape's name doesn't change regardless of it's size or orientation on the page.  If you'd like to use it, click on the picture above to download the reader FOR FREE!!!!!

On Friday during our guided math groups we will be teaching our kinders how to play this simple game I created for the partners of five (some folks call them combinations or fact families).  Our kinders will work in pairs and use a cup of 5 double-sided counters to spill out and sort onto five-frames.  They will then search for that number sentence on their game board and color in the square.  When all the squares are colored in, they count up their color to see who had the most.  Oh year, this one is FREE TOO!!!!  I'm just feeling generous this weekend.  ;-)

This week we will also be reading MANY wonderful stories, including David Goes to School by David Shannon and Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes, just to name a few.  We are also going to be working on rhyming skills as well as introducing the letters 'P' and 'B'.  In our district we follow Linda Almarode's LiPS program.  We will also be having lots of number talks for the numbers 3,4, & 5.  It's going to be a super busy week in Room 130!!!

I hope everyone has a fabulous week.  Don't forget to hop on over and see who else has linked up for Peek at My Week linky party!!

Oh, quick question!!  How do you introduce the letters of the alphabet to your littles?

Peek at My Week

Hey all!!  I just found out about an AWESOME linky that the ever-fabulous Deedee Wills has been hosting for three years now, called Peek at My Week.  I had NO IDEA this linky existed for the past two years, and I'm so glad my new friend Jackie from Pockets of Preschool posted about this!!  In case you're like me and didn't know about this linky, teachers link up to share their lesson plans/schedules/routines/etc that they have planned for the week.  I can't wait to get all types of great ideas from this linky!!  Mrs. Wills' Kindergarten has even shared her lesson plan template this week!!!  SCORE!!

Can I let you in on a bit of a secret??  I don't get back to work until the 18th, and my kinders aren't coming to school until the 26th!!  Ssoo...I don't really have any lesson plans to share with you this week!  I should be able to share those in the next few weeks.  This next week involves me enjoying my last few days of summer as well as HOPEFULLY being able to get into my classroom some this week.  The hallway that my classroom is on has not yet been cleaned, so we're waiting.  

This is how I left my classroom in mid-June, and I'm thinking that this is how it still looks.  I did leave a hand-drawn map to show our wonderful custodians where I would like things placed, and it would be super awesome if things matched up when I go back!!  If you check my last post, you'll see some of the things I've been hard at work creating for my Extreme Classroom Makeover.  For those of you who are back in school already, I want to wish you a fantabulous year ahead!!!  Don't forget to go back over to Mrs. Wills' Kindergarten to see which other teachers have linked up with this!!