Dear Room 203 Families, Thank each of you for attending our recent conference. I really enjoyed having this time to connect with families and talk about how we can work together to support our little learners. I spent some time today posting the students' November writing, which gave me a chance to reflect on the amazing learning this energetic group of learners has engaged in this fall! I love getting to facilitate this learning every day and am so thankful for the adult support you all are providing, both at home and in the classroom. Enjoy the next few days of family and feasting! Katie
Sharing More Stories about our visit to Dwankhozi Basic School...
Last year, QAE started an exciting partnership with Dwankhozi Basic School in rural Zambia. Last summer, Ms. Yokoyama, Mr. Elliott, Ms. Klope and I were able to be a part of our first visit to our partner school! Today, we shared our trip with the kindergarteners, teaching them that we have a partner school and showing them a video and photos of our trip (both below). Afterwards, the kids had lots and lots of questions! We only had time to answer a few today, but we will be spending time doing this in the weeks to come. I told the kids that I would post the video and photos here and that they could use the comments reply to ask the questions that they have.
We will continue our focus on storytelling in Writers' Workshop, writing true stories about something that happened or something we did. I will be writing about the experiences I had while I was in Zambia to model this writing process for the students and to broaden their understanding of the students there. The students will be creating timelines of a day in their own lives, and using this timeline to write small moment narratives about their lives in Seattle. We hope to share some of these stories with the students in Dwankhozi.
My Writers’ Workshop instruction will focus on helping the students tell stories, planning their stories page by page and adding more details to their pictures and stories. We will also be bringing our stories to life by adding dialogue with speech bubbles. We plan to invite our families in for a writing celebration to share our published stories before Thanksgiving Break.
Readers' Workshop ~ This week, students will each receive their “just right” class book bag for Readers’ Workshop. Most students start with A & B books in their bags. These early pre-reading books all have a pattern that carries the reader through the book. An adult reads them the first page and then the students use the pattern and the pictures to read the rest. Students will be reading these "just right" leveled books for the rest of the year, encouraged to move up levels at their own pace. I will be reading individually with each student over the next few weeks, assessing each and determining his or her independent reading level. See the document below 'what readers need' for more information on the reading levels. We will talk more about this during our conference in a few weeks. Enjoy your week!
Mustache & Beard day was a big hit!I am amazed at how well the students are doing learning the routines of kindergarten! They have been job experts and have creatively incorporated tasks that I have traditionally done into their jobs. For example, when Lucy was caboose a few weeks back, she asked if she could do the "line-o-meter", a game I made up the first week of school to straighten out the line. By the end of her week as caboose, Lucy was not only straightening out the line with the line-o-meter but was also leading our "line check" - ensuring that all line members are in line with their feet on the line, their eyes forward, their hands to their sides and their voices off. In the three weeks since, each caboose has taken on the same tasks as their own. It is pretty cool to see this ownership happening so quickly with so many of our daily tasks. My ideal classroom is one that is run by self-directed learners working collaboratively to learn everything they can get their brains around! This group is well on their way to becoming these learners. We continue to work hard on being good listeners during carpet lessons and class meetings. As a class we are getting better every day! Some of our students are already listening experts ~ always sitting criss cross with a still body, a voice that is off and a brain that is engaged! These experts have been really helpful in showing others who are still learning how to be good listeners all of the time. Our marble jar is almost full, evidence of what great listeners we have become! After earning the final few marbles early in the week, the kids will work together to decide how we will celebrate on Friday. This process will include a brainstorming session that usually generates some very creative and often not-school-possible dreaming, followed by some reality checking/reeling in by me and culminating in a vote on the school-possible ideas generated. For the past few years, my classes have decided to celebrate by wearing pajamas to school and having extended dessert book time or extended post-cleanup dance parties. You may hear reports from your student this week about this process that reflect the pre-reality check dreaming ~ for this reason l will send out an e-mail on Wednesday night communicating the specific details for Friday's celebration.
Interested in editing your student's E-Folio... |