• What are we doing in Kindergarten?

    Morning Work Students will practice previously taught skills while we are waiting for the official school day to begin. This is also when we are unpacking and preparing or materials to begin learning.

    Number Talks We are learning to subitize! Subitizing is seeing at a glance the number of items presented without counting. By being able to subitize quickly, students gain a deeper understanding of the number and the number pairs used to build a given number. This help to build number sense and the foundation for addition and subtraction.

    Math Workshop New math skills are introduced during this time along with review activities to keep what we have previously learned fresh in our minds. The teacher will provide math lessons to the whole group, small groups, and individuals. We will work with partners and small groups to solve problems and practice the skills taught. We will discuss our learning to be sure we all understand. We also are making an interactive notebook in class to share with you as the year goes on. More about the notebooks will follow later.

    Shared Reading/Booktubs This is a time where we practice the books we have previously read in class.  The books are sometimes made up of sight words we have learned, words we can sound out based on our phonics lessons or seasonal books based on our learning themes. We save the books in our booktubs to reread to ourselves, a friend, or a teacher. After we practice, we will take our books home to read to you. Please find a place to save them as they make great reading fluency practice at home. 

    Centers Center time is when the teachers work with students in small groups based on individual student levels. When students are not meeting with the teacher they will be making poetry folder projects, practicing skills through games and interactive activities, visiting the listening center or working with hands on materials not easily done in a whole group setting. This is one of our favorite learning times of the day.

    Writer’s Workshop We will listen to the teacher provide writing instruction while she demonstrates the process of writing. This begins by drawing pictures that we will call illustrations, labeling the illustration with phonetic spelling, while working towards writing simple sentences to form a paragraph. We will learn to write narrative, informational and opinion pieces in kindergarten. Handwriting instruction may also be done at this time.

    Phonics Phonics instruction is done both separately and in conjunction with our writing time. We will learn the sounds that all of the consonants and vowels make (both long and short sounds). As the year progresses we will learn about word families and the “chunks” in words that we can recognize to help us read new words more quickly and to decode larger words as we see them in print. We will also learn the blends and diagraphs (th, wh, sh, ch, th).

    Reader’s Workshop The teacher will provide instruction on all of the things good readers do. This helps us to learn to read books and to get the meaning of what we are reading, as well as the books we listen to. We will learn all about the roles of the author and illustrator. Punctuation marks will become very important to us as we discover their role in reading words in print.

    Calendar We learn math, language, science and social studies during this special time of our day. We build our oral language, learn song and poems, and practice phonemic awareness skills. Our teacher introduces new sight words and helps us practice previously taught words too. We learn about our National holidays and the symbols of our country too!