What Are You Teaching: September 26

24 September 2016 - Leave a Comment
I know no one is hanging on the edge of their seats waiting for my weekly post and I do these mostly for my own planning purposes but it's good to be back! I took last weekend off after a long week of Parent/Teacher conferences. I LOVE meeting with all of my families but 44 conferences is a lot and it was a pretty exhausting week. We celebrated by going to the baseball game and enjoying some nachos (my favorite at the ballpark).
Sadly I just realized my husband and I didn't take one picture at the game. That's a first! They did open the roof half way through the game so that was pretty cool. I love Chase Field with the roof open!

 So now for the big question....

 We have a lot on our plates this week!
Here is the break down:

 Morning Work: We are on Unit 2 now and this week we are focusing on the letter S. I use these as an opportunity to revisit handwriting for this letter since it has already been introduced. We really focus on using this sound in words at this point. We also practice writing our sight words have & is and this week we introduce proper nouns. This goes nicely with writing lists of our friends, families, pets, and anything else we can think of that fits the proper noun category!
Centers: Last week (after the game!) I reorganized my center station. This shelf is kind of awkward but it's what I have! I color coded my bins to match the labels for each activity. My activities stay pretty consistent throughout the year so I shouldn't have to change these very often. Now every column of shelves belongs together. It worked really well this week!

 The Cut & Glue, ABC Center, and Write the Room are all included in this week's centers. These really help me with my planning. I have plenty of options to fit the needs of my class which has been a huge life saver year after year.  Click HERE to see them in my store.
The Sound Clips and Spin & Dab are from my Ultimate ABC Centers unit. The dabbers are their favorite right now! I also have some activities from my easy prep All Set? You Bet! September centers.

 Reading: I love my CAFE book by the 2 Sisters and I use this to keep me organized. To make sure I am hitting all of the components I follow this schedule...
Monday-Comprehension
Tuesday-Accuracy
Wednesday-Fluency
Thursday-Expand Vocabulary

 So this week our Comprehension strategy is SETTING and I am pulling some ideas from ReadWorks. I am really excited about this too because it is giving me the option to give my high readers some passages on their level. I hope they are as thrilled as I am!
For Accuracy/Fluency (I am combining these this week) we are going to introduce our fluency routine. This is a time that I have students sit knee to knee (across from each other) and read a fluency passage to each other. Right now our fluency passage is an alphabet page and we are working on letter naming.

 Not all of my kiddos still need this though so some will read a passage from ReadWorks.  They read it together for 2 minutes and then each student gets the opportunity to read it for one minute on their own. Our goal is to become better readers and get faster each day.
Expand Vocabulary will go with our story for the week, Nature Spy and the Amazing Words provided by Reading Street. 

 Wow....I am wordy today. Thanks for sticking with me!

 Writer's Workshop: This is my favorite week of Writer's Workshop in Kindergarten. This week we are talking about what good writers do. I start out with Mr. Putter and Tabby Write the Book by Cynthia Rylant and it really hits all of the things that good writers do. I love this book! On Tuesday we will read Arthur Writes a Story by Marc Brown and I love focusing on ideas for that one. On Thursday we will read More Bears! by Ken Nesbitt. This story will help us talk about our sharing time and how our friends can help give us suggestions to make our story 'even better'...that's how I like to put it! Here are my affiliate links to these books that I am compensated for if you choose to buy them through this link. I just purchased More Bears!, The Pencil, and The Best Story for this week and next. I am slowly but surely filling up my mentor text book shelf.


Math: In math this week we are starting Unit 3 of Guiding Kinders. Did you know that Deanna and Deedee are revamping the whole bundle? The new units are GREAT! They were amazing before but now they are even better. They have included literature connections for each lesson and links to videos to support the concepts. I love the new updates. This week we are starting the counting strategies lessons and they are my very favorite lessons to teach. HERE is my post from the first year I was using their lessons and you'll see what I mean....

 Math Tubs are full of our September Math Centers thanks to a couple of awesome moms who laminated and cut ALL of them for me! I have the most amazing parent volunteers this year!

 And FINALLY for Wacky Wednesday we are doing our second week of our Apple Unit.  This week we will have some tasting stations, we'll make applesauce, investigate whether an apple will sink or float, and we will "dig in" and investigate the inside of an apple.

 Here are some snap shots from last week: 
Click HERE to see this unit in my store. 
That's IT! I am tired now just thinking about it! We have 2 weeks until October break and I am going to do my best to get all that I can in before we leave and forget all of our procedures. The struggle is real.  I finally get them right where I want them and we take a break.

 Here's a link to all of the products I am using this week. Some I talked about and some I didn't. Have a great week friends!

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