Reading and Writing with Pumpkins

Some of our little kinders LOVE to write. When asked, "Où est-ce que tu veux jouer aujourd'hui?" (using the AIM gestures) many of our students will respond with "the writing centre" ...

To push them to their limits and get them out of their comfort zone of writing letters to Mommy and Daddy, I provided them with a writing challenge...

We've been reading a cute little shared reading titled "Cinq Citrouilles" (adopted from Mme. Rego's French Class) where students sit in a circle and I choose 5 pumpkins to come up to the front of the circle to represent a pumpkin. They even get to hold a pumpkin on a popsicle stick. Students read the chart paper and as we say, "a fait une rouler" (while rolling our hands in a circle), the last pumpkin in the line goes and sits down. While this activity DOES contradict the new FDK play-based learning, ALL students love it. There is not one single kindergarten student who doesn't raise their hand to be a pumpkin ... and they ALL help read it. It's pretty cute.

Now back to my writing challenge ... I provided clipboards for students and piece of paper with a blank fence printed on it. I told them that I needed their help and that they had a 'job' to do. I asked them to find the word that meant pumpkin on the chart paper of our shared reading and draw the pumpkins.

A few minutes later, this is what I found:

Two girls hard at "work"

Close up of their writing

 





So yes, while play-based learning is important ... I DO have students who want to do WORK! This is where our struggle comes into play ... no pun intended. Our balance, we have found, is to provide the tools necessary, the space and the time to allow for both. They were not told that they HAD to work, but rather that the clipboards were there ready for them if they chose to do it. Not everyone did. And that's just fine.

This week, we are visiting the local mall and we will be trick-or-treating! There is a lot of learning and inquiry that can be done outside of the classroom ... and I've been inspired by another 'virtual teacher colleague' who posted this on facebook (Thank you, Karen Groenewagen) ... to do something similar on our 'trick-or-treating walk' ...

Wish me luck!

Haha.

Pin It

Morning Meetings and Calendar Debate

There is TONS of debate about 'calendar-time' in Kindergarten and what 'calendar-time' should look like within the realm of FDK. The debate is that based on the curriculum, we shouldn't be 'doing calendar' at all as a large group, whole circle lasting longer than 10 minutes. However ... it would be absolutely crazy to throw the calendar out the window because we know how GREAT the calendar is to teach skills such as leadership, counting, patterning and language. So, the debate remains: What is the happy medium?

In our French Kindergarten class, we spend about 20 minutes every day following a 'morning circle' routine. Of which, the calendar only takes up about 5 minutes.  Since students have plenty of opportunity to stand up, stretch, sing, dance, etc. during our 'morning meeting' ... it's not really as long as it sounds.

Students sit in a circle on the carpet and we begin our day by singing 'Bonjour les amis' ... a gesture-filled song that they're getting to know pretty well! After this, I choose about 5 students to ask, "Comment-ca va?" Students are pretty quick to tell me (again using the AIM gesture-approach), "Ca va FANTASTIC!" This is the newest gesture that they've learned so they love showing me that they know it ... not to mention, the action for the word is pretty intense! We choose a 'Chef du jour' by giving clues to what they're wearing, how many syllables are in their name, etc ... After the Chef du jour is chosen, we direct students to the table centres to 'draw' the Chef du jour and they try to write his/her name. The picture that the Chef draws of him/herself is pinned up on the wall. As of today, there are about 15 self-portraits on the wall - some very proud Chefs!

These students are hard at work drawing their 'Chef'

Once the portraits are finished, students gather at the carpet again for 'calendar'. My teaching partner suggested that students bring home their 'Chef books' so we staple all of the drawings together, put a cover page on it and send it home! Students love looking through them throughout the day (during read-to-self time) and it serves as a nice safekeep! Next on the agenda ... the 'Chef' picks a pointer and leads the class in counting the days of the month (sometimes hand-over-hand). After this, we talk about the month and the letters in the month. We've been singing a cute little jingle to help with this, titled "O-C-T-O-B-R-E".

And it goes a little somethin' like this (to the tune of Frere Jaques):

O-C-T-O-B-R-E

 

B-R-E

 

B-R-E

 

O-C-T-O-B-R-E

 

C'est le mois d'Octobre

 

Here is a link to the song lyrics (can I even call them lyrics?!) so that you can just print them off if you love them! Click here for link

 

Here's a sound clip of my students singing our cute little jingle:

 

 

I had to 'black out' the video (but left the audio) because we have a new student in the class and they don't have 'photo permission' yet! I also wanted to mention that this clip was recorded as students were coming back to the carpet after their 'Chef' drawing ... Students were asked to 'look at a book' but these boys went over to the chart paper and started singing away pointing to the words on the chart paper... Not exactly what I asked them to do, but nevertheless... I captured their interest and encouraged them to keep going!!

 

The calendar routine is usually followed by a read-aloud or a shared reading. If our bodies are too squirmy, then we go right to table centres and I call students to the carpet in small groups to do reading.

 

Stay tuned for what reading and writing looks like and sounds like in our French Kindergarten class!! 

 

 

TTFN!

 

 





Pin It

How 'bout them apples?!

Apples, apples and more apples.

I think this is a 'blogger-no-no' but my post is going to be mostly pictures. It's hard to explain INQUIRY without pictures!!

Here are some of the fun things we did during centre/community time this week:

1. We read stories about 'apples':

Click Here for Link to Scholastic

 

  

Click Here for Link to Renaud-Bray 

Click Here for Link to Amazon

2. We took a survey:

I explained the chart, reading the French words and making reference to the coloured magnets and pulled students names out of a baggie. As their name was called, they came up to the white board to choose which kind of apple they like best. In addition, they had to tell me the colour that they chose. We also counted the results in French and realized that green apples are the most popular kind of apple in our class!

3. We wrote apple sentences:

I prepared the following document (Click here for download) which includes our shared reading (which was later put on chart paper), sentence strips used to label pictures, and two writing activities. It's not very fancy, but it's the 'gist' of our 'teacher directed' centres this week.

**The obsessive-compulsive part of me just wasn't satisfied with this 'simple' version of our unit, so I created a fancy one and uploaded it to Teachers Pay Teachers. **

Students were not given examples of what the final products should have looked like and this allowed for some creativity in the activities. For example, there were apple die-cuts already made, but crayons were also made available along with pencils and markers. The result - no two pages looked alike! :)

4. Painting with apples:

I LOVVVVE this example. Inquiry at it's finest ... Green apple, orange apple, green apple, green apple, orange HANDPRINT?! Hmm ... In my 'instructions' for this centre, all I said was that there was paint in a shallow dish and there would be apples to use to put the paint on the paper. Stereotypically, you see this project look like beautifully placed apples stamped in perfect patterns. Well, when you don't tell students HOW to do it, they form their own interpretations of what to do. And by all means, it's not wrong ... the point of the painting apples activity was simply to explore the medium of paint with something other than a paintbrush. Obviously, this student in particular realized that her hands could also be used as a tool. A simple, yet astonishing discovery when you're 3 and a half years old.

When I put all of the students' work together on an inquiry board, this is what we get:

 

 

I still have to add 'words' and 'commentary' to the inquiry board, but for the most part ... this sums up our week in kinderland!

 

Happy Turkey Weekend everyone!!

 

TTFN,

 



Pin It

Apples and Worms

Where do I start?!

Okay, honestly … where do I even begin? There has been SO much happening in our Kindergarten class these past few weeks that I’m not sure where to start! This blog post will be a mix of things as I go through my Ipad and remember all of our fun happenings!

By the way, times like this make me realize just how invaluable the Ipads are to documentation for assessment purposes. I keep saying, “Oh ya!” and “Oh, wow I forgot about …” as I scroll through the camera roll. As the year goes on, I’m hoping to become more tech-savvy when it comes to apps but for now … the camera is coming in handy!

Yet another inquiry …

APPLES AND WORMS!

During snack time, one of my little guys pulled out a MacIntosh apple that had a little brown spot on it. He held it up and said, “Does a worm live in here?!” I told him that a worm probably didn’t live in his apple (I didn’t want to scare him from ever eating apples again!), but questioned him about it!

Next week, we’re going to focus on apples a little bit more. Some of our centres will feature apple patterning, apple poems (en français), counting and sorting by colour and of course – eating! Our school is fortunate enough to have a fully functioning kitchen, so I’m hoping (with the support of administration, of course) to give the children a true-making-learning-hands-on-and-as-real-as-can-be-experience by baking some apple crisp! If I peel the apples and give the students some plastic knives to dice them, it might not be as impossible as it sounds. Plus, they’re going to LOVE eating it!

After the 'worm in the apple' conversation, I decided to purchase some very REAL looking worms and soil for our sensory bin. The kiddies had a blast putting soil in their pails and digging for worms. The custodian on the other hand … not so much. Heehee.

TWO BOYS PLAYING IN THE DIRT ... ALTHOUGH I DON'T LIKE TO LIMIT CETNRES, THIS ONE HAD A MAXIMUM OF THREE STUDENTS ALLOWED AT ONE TIME.

Here are some pictures of some other learning centres in our room: Literacy Centre and Calendar Centre.

 

LITERACY CENTRE - PRACTICING NAMES - AND NOT JUST THEIR OWN!

 

 

CALENDAR CENTRE

 

Let me explain 'the Calendar Centre' ... with the focus OFF of long circle-time, where students are sitting for extended periods of time doing calendar, we decided that having a centre for the weather bear would be a better choice for our students. After dressing “Mr. Ours” for the rain (umbrella and all), they spun a spinner to dress him up for other seasons too. At this centre, we rotate the weather bear and the calendar and have students manipulate the date and the days of the week.

That's all for now! Stay tuned to see how our 'apple inquiry' goes!

TTFN,

 

Pin It

Our first inquiries!

The new FDK program is child-centered, developmentally appropriate and play-based. In our classroom, we focus on ‘inquiry’ … which means, we plan for tomorrow based on what the students are interested in and what their needs are today. This week, we had two really great ‘inquiries’ …

If you’ve ever tried to teach while a fly, a spider or a bee were in your classroom, you’ll understand that students are WAAAAYYYY more interested in insects than anything you have to say. So, we went with it. We trapped two wasps this week, put them into little glass containers, took out some magnifying glasses and set up a ‘science discovery’ table.

We asked questions like, “What do you see with the magnifying glass that you didn’t see before?” … and “What will happen to the wasp if we leave him in the jar? … How do you know?”  In planning for next week, I’m going to ‘revisit’ the wasp inquiry … I’m going to read “Les abeilles"

                                               (Click here for the link to Scholastic)

And we’re going to fill in our anchor chart (using as much French language as possible, sandwiching the two languages) using prior knowledge and our newly learned info from our inquiry and our read-aloud. I’m planning for this “mini-lesson” to take about 5 – 10 minutes … no longer than that. If students aren’t interested in it, we’ll cut it short.

 

I also have a cute ‘craftivity’ for students to complete, inspired by Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching Blog, which will look something like this:

I’ve cut out all the ‘pieces’ and students will be responsible for gluing the pieces together, including the stripes – this should turn out quite interesting! Heehee.

Our second inquiry began in the block area. My teaching partner read “If You Take a Mouse to School” by Laura Numeroff (Click here for a link to this story being read on youtube -  super cute link btw because it’s a child reading it). During centre time, a few of our students were building towers. When I inquired about their towers, one student said, “This is where the mouse lives like in our book.” Ding, ding, ding. Bells went off inside my head. I questioned further, and he went to go get the book. Sure enough, he was doing a fantastic job replicating what he had seen in the book. I asked him if it would help if he kept the book open and tried to ‘copy’ it to challenge himself. So he did.

 

Two of our kinders (one JK, one SK), looking at the book and trying to replicate it.

 

A few other students came by to see what the excitement was about. I encouraged some of the girls to ‘draw’ the mouse house. It seems that we have little architects and contractors in our class … drawing up plans, building according to the plan.

This is a picture that one of our JKs drew of the tower ... there's a little mouse in the picture too (how cute ... and yet, so detailed!)

Our next steps, as teachers … well, it’s time for us to get down and build towers!! Next week we’re going to build some towers, take pictures of our towers and challenge our little contractors to out-build the teacher. We can also use "wonder" questions in the block area to stretch their thinking and we can make connections to what's being done in the block area to other centres (i.e. write about it, draw it, create a playdough model, etc.. )

Have I said how much I love my job?

Pin It

Kids LOVE David!

I had a feeling the kids would love David. But I didn't know they would LOOOOVE David even in French. David is bad ... and he's always up to no good.



We read "David va à l'école" at the carpet, sandwiching the French words with English and inferring from the pictures what David was up to. The kids were glued to the story, hanging onto every page. After we read the story, I introduced our 'craftivity'... I prepared (brown) circles for the head and the ears, black circles for the eyes, a black mouth and white triangles for the teeth. I showed students a model and asked for a raise of hands of who would like to make their very own David ... no surprise, everyone raised their hand.


This is what they looked like:

This was my 'model' to show them what the final product looked like ...

 

And this is what you get when you don't direct them to do it the 'right' way ... heehee. So cute.

 

On the second day, we re-read David and talked about the bad things that David did at school (chewed gum, butted in line, painted on his friends, etc ...) and I modelled how to draw a picture of David at school, using think aloud strategies. For example, "Hmm, David is not being very good at school. We read that he was standing on the desk. If I wanted to draw a picture of David at school, I would want to draw him standing on top of a desk." Then I asked them if they were going to draw a picture of themselves at school, would they draw themselves standing on the desk? NOOOO, of course not! I asked them to raise their hands and share what kinds of things they were doing at school. Then I modelled some of their examples. I prepared a worksheet from Mille Merveilles (Click here for link) and asked students to join me at the writing centre to draw self-portraits of themselves at school.

 

 

 

The result: diagnostic assessments on who could print their name, who could recognize letters in their name, who could hold a pencil properly ... and some cute selfies!

 

I had the JKs do the drawing only, while the SKs were asked to trace their name (I wrote them in yellow marker), and cut and glue the letters in their name in the proper order (I wrote out the letters).

 

I have die-cut frames that I'm going to attach their 'selfies' to, and it's going to be a cute display for the open house/BBQ. Oh, and I'll put up the David crafitivities too ... I can't resist.

 

TTFN,

 

 

 

Pin It

First Week!

I survived!!!

We spent hours upon hours getting ready for the first day ... and then it was over in the blink of an eye.

We only had a few "criers" on the first day ... and a few "entourages" that accompanied their little ones to class. But after a few quick kisses, parents were on their way. After about an hour, everyone seemed to settle in and they got right down to business - PLAYING! Trains, blocks, trucks, playdough, dolls, painting, you name it ... the children were engaged. Yay, mission accomplished!

I cannot begin to describe how crazy the first week was. It was craaaazy. Although it was also fantastic. I am so blessed to be a part of such a wonderful school and I am so lucky to be doing what I love each and every day. I love my "job" ... except, if you're a teacher or if you're married to one, you know it's much more than just a "job" ... it's a way of life.

I promised updated pictures of my classroom, so here they are (much more polished than just a few weeks ago, might I add!):

After meeting our little ones, we decided to rearrange a few things ... but for the most part, this is what you would see if you walked into our classroom. Oh, except that it's much messier at the end of the day ... we're working on 'self-regulation' and the expectations of tidying up, but they haven't quite mastered it yet.


Pin It