- Jack Hartmann See It Say It Sign It (Look for the one that is just over 6 minutes).
This year, you will find that I utilize the "workshop" model at many times throughout the day. The workshop model allows me to teach a highlight lesson, practice it with the children in a whole group setting, then allow the children to practice on their own. While they work on their own (or in partnerships or in small groups), I can meet with children and individualize instruction as I meet with them.
In reading workshop, the children are learning about their reading identify and they're building good reading habits. So far, we've learned:
- Readers choose books they want to read and share those books with others.
- Readers share their favorite part of a book.
- Readers have favorite memories of reading times.
- Readers read every day.
- Readers care for books by picking them up by the spine and putting them away carefully.
- Readers turn pages carefully.
- Readers place their books flat on the table when they read.
We are beginning the year in writing with oral storytelling. I read the book "Jamacia's Find," and encouraged the children to relate to the main character by thinking about a time that they found something that belonged to someone else, or perhaps had lost something of their own. We have been building on this story by talking about other stories from our own lives such as going to the park to play or sharing something we did over the weekend. The students also practiced drawing people with some detail and drawing a picture of their story on a white baord. Of course, we went over thorough directions on how to get out white boards and markers and how to use those materials correctly.
The "STAR" books that I've read to the children are:
- Corduroy (Don Freeman)
- The Napping House (Audrey Wood)
- Peter's Chair (Ezra Jack Keats)
In Math, I've read the book Anno's Counting Book, and the children made observations of teh different amount of items they saw on each page. We also talked about the connection between counting 1-12 and the change in seasons that occurs throughout the book. A note went home about the start of our year in math today as well.