Every morning we start our day at the carpet with morning meeting. We read a morning message, discuss our schedule, and participate in calendar. We also have circle time. Circle time is one of my favorite parts of the day! This week circle time included introducing yourself and answering the Question of the Day.
Monday - What was your favorite part of summer break?
Tuesday - What's your favorite color?
Wednesday - What's your favorite sport?
Thursday - What's your favorite animal?
Friday - What was your favorite part of the week?
During circle time, students practice how to speak in front of others with a "presentation" voice and listen respectfully to others while they talk.
Name Activities
We have a lot of new students in our class this year, so our class participated in different activities to help us learn everyone's name!
For the first activity, I printed each child's name on a card and one by one held a card up for the students to read. We sang a song to help us read the name and focus on the beginning letter.
Example:
"This is Amina's name. Amina starts with A. Amina! A for Amina!"
I highlighted the first letter of each name and we reviewed that we always start a person's name with a capital letter. The students taped their names in alphabetical order.
We also graphed our names! Everyone cut up their name and mixed the letters in their name together. Next, they had to search for the letters they would need to glue their name back in order. Afterwards, each student counted the letters in his/her name and added it to our chart How many letters are in your name?
We asked different questions about our chart:
How many students have 5 letters in their name?
How many students have 6 letters in their name?
How many more students have 5 letters than 4 letters?
How many students participated in our activity?
We also sang songs to help us learn each other's names.
(Based on the tune of This Old Man)
I like you! You like me!
So good friends we will be!
______ likes ______.
______ likes ______.
So good friends they will be!
(Based on the book Brown Bear Brown Bear)
_______, _______ who do you see?
I see ________ looking at me!
Why do you come to school?
During this activity, each student finished the sentence I come to school to... I modeled by writing my own sentence I come to school to teach. We talked about the parts of a sentence, reviewing capitalization, punctuation, and spaces between words. Afterwards, the students were given their sentence, but it was cut up and scrambled. Each student had to unscramble their sentence, glue it back in order, and add an illustration.
Here are some examples from our activity:
I come to school to learn.
I come to school to make new friends.
I come to school to read books.
I come to school to play.
Handwriting Practice
D'Nealian is the handwriting style we will be teaching at UST this year. Students will begin practicing cursive at the end of first grade and our hope is that D'Nealian handwriting will create a smooth transition into cursive.
Each morning students will practice forming a letter as part of their morning work.
This week...
Tuesday - Cc
Wednesday - Oo
Thursday - Aa
Friday - Dd
We are not practicing handwriting in ABC order, but by how the letters are formed. For example, all of the lowercase letters above (c, o, a, d) start the same way. During this practice, I tell the students "If you can write a c, you can write an o. If you can write an o, you can write an a. If you can write an a, you can write a d." This will be our class' morning work until we have completed the entire alphabet. Please help your child practice this style when completing work at home.
Star Student
One of the class' favorite activities this week was Star Student! When you are the star student, you sit in front of the class and call on your classmates to ask you questions. We discussed using question words like what, when, why, where, how, and do to create questions. Students asked a lot of great questions to help them learn more about their classmates!
What is your favorite video game?
What is your favorite thing to do at home?
What is your favorite movie?
How old are you?
What do you like to eat?
Do you have any brothers or sisters?
While the star student answered these questions, I wrote sentences on the board about them.
Examples:
________ likes to play and build with Legos.
Green is his favorite color.
He likes to read books about cars.
Each student created a page that will be added to the star student's book. Each child will bring home their book next week.
Thank you for helping make this week great for your child! Enjoy your weekend!
Miss Allison