This week we began exploring contractions. Students learned to form contractions by squeezing the words together, removing a vowel, and adding an apostrophe where the vowel was deleted. Every student got the opportunity to make contractions using their dry erase boards.
Today we began testing the houses that our young engineers designed. Using colored rice to simulate rainfall, students tested their houses to see where rain collected. Students found that if their house had a flat roof, the rain just sat on top of the roof. We explored alternative designs and thought about ways that students could create houses that would allow the rain to run off. Eventually, we will be creating gutter systems for our houses to test which house is able to collect the most rainwater in a rain barrel. Here you can see how one of our young engineers modified the design of her roof after testing. Initially, this house had a flat roof that collected rain. Based on what she learned from testing, this student modified her design and created a sloped roof!
Today we began working on our sustainability inquiry by exploring children's books on various topics. We were very fortunate to have many kindergarten-leveled texts provided through grants from donorschoose.org and Boundless Readers. Students explored book bins filled with texts related to natural resources, energy, water, recycling, reusing, and garbage. Each student used sticky notes to record what they were learning and wondering about the environment. Based on the book Reality Checks by Tony Stead, students began by recording some information that they think they know about the environment. Throughout the unit, students will be moving sticky notes from What I Think I Know to either a page labeled, Yes, I Was Right! or a page labeled Misconceptions. This will allow our young environmentalists to begin to look for confirmation of what they know, and will help them to make sense of new information that doesn't align to what they already "knew." Students will also be recording new information on a page labeled New Learning and will be writing down new questions on a page labeled Wonders. For the next several weeks, we will be working to build background knowledge about the environment, which will in turn allow students to ask more questions. After we have built our background knowledge about the environment, each student will be selecting a sustainability topic for further exploration.
Just today I had a new Donors Choose request posted to my page. This page would allow our kindergarten students to get 2 Chromebooks for research and 2 iPads for creating presentations for our inquiry projects. Any support you can give would be greatly appreciated!!! www.donorschoose.org/lindsaymcgrane Despite the snow day, this week we dove into nonfiction texts. These are always some very fun lessons as students explore a variety of nonfiction texts. This week we learned about headings and bold words. Our goal is for students to learn to identify these features in order to help them find information in their reading. We have lots of questions and using these nonfiction features as tools will help us find our answers! This week we conducted multiple readings of the poem "How to Paint a Donkey" by Naomi Shihab Nye. The purpose of close reading is to have students delve deeply into a text in order to achieve a complex understanding of what the author has written. In kindergarten our close reads involve learning to annotate a text (marking important parts). We read the poem multiple times to focus on what the author had written. We also did a lot of talking with our classmates to discuss what we noticed in the poem. For our culminating activity, students created posters featuring advice for the narrator of the poem. Students discussed the author's message and made posters that encouraged the narrator of the poem to be proud of their work. It was exciting to see students talking about their ideas and analyzing a text! It was definitely a proud moment for me! What an amazing week! Students brought in their solutions to our empty lot Problem Based Learninf project. To kick off the week, we did a gallery walk where students got to see all the hard work that their classmates did in creating their businesses! Thank you for your support! This week we began working on our inquiry into sustainability and the environment. We began with two exciting activities. First, we started experimenting with various materials to build houses. This is going to reinforce what students are learning in science with Ms. Lohitsa. This week students began working with different materials and will move toward improving their designs in the coming weeks. Eventually we will be using rice to mimic rain and will be creating rain collection systems for our houses. We also began to learn about sustainability by reading a Quirkles book about decomposition. We began an experiment to see what will happen to bread, an apple, paper, and plastic when it is placed in a container with soil. We will be checking on the items periodically to see what items are decomposing and which are not. This will lead us to a discussion of what these results mean for garbage in the real world. Students are very excited to see what will happen! |
Mrs. McGrane
I love teaching kindergarten literacy at STEM! It is amazing to be a part of the reading and writing growth of a kindergarten student. You get to see kids move from knowing some letters and sounds to being enthusiastic readers and young authors. Archives
March 2016
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