September 14 - 18

This week we have been working on using quiet voices during reading and math centers so that I can work with small groups. The class came up with many ideas to help them remember to stay quiet, including playing soft music (if you can't hear the music, you're too loud), having a picture of me going "Shhh" that I can show them, and having to leave the center for a few minutes if it takes more than 1 reminder.

At the reading centers students have been making words with magnetic letters, listening to books on tape, reading a variety of books in the class library, reading and illustrating a color poem, and playing alphabet games.

In the math centers students have been counting to 100 by 2s, 5s, or 10s on a laminated 100 board with a dry erase marker, playing a card game where they look for numbers that add up to 5, making and writing numbers 0 - 10 with paint, and regrouping 1s into 10s and 10s into 100 with base ten blocks.

In writing we have been building our stamina to write and illustrate stories for up to 30 minutes. It has been really interesting to learn about the students' lives through their stories. We also made a class book using "ing" as in "What are you doing?" "I am coloring." Learning to identify chunks of letters that make a sound like that will help the students to become more independent readers.