I am eager to get back into our routines in kindergarten! After our nice, long holiday vacation, now's the perfect time to reestablish some of the routines that were a bit disrupted in the week leading up to the break and then last week with the snow days.
Over vacation, I did some thinking about our schedule and what was working and what wasn't. I made some changes that I think will be very helpful. One is that we are starting our day with Writing Workshop, just after Morning Meeting. Students have been very successful during our Math Workshop block, which was formerly in this time frame. I am hoping we can gain some momentum in writing with this tweak to the schedule. After writing, students will have a brief snack and choice time, to give them a brain break and a chance to recharge before Reading Workshop, which will round out our morning before lunch. Math Workshop will now be how we end our school day. Of course, there is a lot more in our schedule. I will post the updated schedule to the Schedules section of this website.
Reading Workshop
Please visit the Reading section of this blog for information about the structure of Reading Workshop. We have had difficulty up to this point in Kindergarten getting through every component of the workshop, which was part of my problem solving over vacation. Part of the problem was simply just running out of time, but part of the problem was behavior related--students seemed like they just couldn't sustain focus at the end of our morning. I am hoping that having a snack/choice time break will help alleviate this issue.
The focus of our mini-lessons last week was finding and following the patterns in our book bag books. The books in the book bag are "good fit" books--books that children can (mostly) read independently. Students are becoming very good at noticing and reading our sight words in their books, which helps them greatly. We will continue to work on this skill this week, since last week was so abbreviated.
Students have independent reading time (Read to Self), partner reading time (Read to Someone), and literacy station (Daily 5) time. Last week, we had success with the reading mini-lesson and Daily 5 routine. This week, we will work hard to practice and remember the expectations of Read to Self to practice what was taught in each day's mini-lesson. We will also start doing Read to Someone with a consistent literacy partner. Prior to this, students had some choice with their partners, but these partnerships will be teacher-determined from here on out, for a variety of reasons. Sharing Circle is another important component of the Reading Workshop. Students were able to share their success during Read to Self last week by showing the class what they noticed in their books (patterns). Students sharing with and teaching other is quite powerful.
The photos below are from the literacy station portion of our Reading Workshop:
Over vacation, I did some thinking about our schedule and what was working and what wasn't. I made some changes that I think will be very helpful. One is that we are starting our day with Writing Workshop, just after Morning Meeting. Students have been very successful during our Math Workshop block, which was formerly in this time frame. I am hoping we can gain some momentum in writing with this tweak to the schedule. After writing, students will have a brief snack and choice time, to give them a brain break and a chance to recharge before Reading Workshop, which will round out our morning before lunch. Math Workshop will now be how we end our school day. Of course, there is a lot more in our schedule. I will post the updated schedule to the Schedules section of this website.
Reading Workshop
Please visit the Reading section of this blog for information about the structure of Reading Workshop. We have had difficulty up to this point in Kindergarten getting through every component of the workshop, which was part of my problem solving over vacation. Part of the problem was simply just running out of time, but part of the problem was behavior related--students seemed like they just couldn't sustain focus at the end of our morning. I am hoping that having a snack/choice time break will help alleviate this issue.
The focus of our mini-lessons last week was finding and following the patterns in our book bag books. The books in the book bag are "good fit" books--books that children can (mostly) read independently. Students are becoming very good at noticing and reading our sight words in their books, which helps them greatly. We will continue to work on this skill this week, since last week was so abbreviated.
Students have independent reading time (Read to Self), partner reading time (Read to Someone), and literacy station (Daily 5) time. Last week, we had success with the reading mini-lesson and Daily 5 routine. This week, we will work hard to practice and remember the expectations of Read to Self to practice what was taught in each day's mini-lesson. We will also start doing Read to Someone with a consistent literacy partner. Prior to this, students had some choice with their partners, but these partnerships will be teacher-determined from here on out, for a variety of reasons. Sharing Circle is another important component of the Reading Workshop. Students were able to share their success during Read to Self last week by showing the class what they noticed in their books (patterns). Students sharing with and teaching other is quite powerful.
The photos below are from the literacy station portion of our Reading Workshop:
Stay tuned for an update on our Writing Workshop. Exciting things are happening! |