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.

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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!

 

 





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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,

 



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