man, I don't get how I can forget to take pictures!! But I did. Our winter tree is AWESOME!!! The kids are loving thinking about winter and snow! On Thursday we are going to talk about what happens to the animals in winter. I have a hands on science experiment that we are going to do. I take a zip lock and fill it with crisco. We then place another zip lock inside the first to make a "mitten". The we put a hand in the mitten and put the mitten in ice water. The kids see how animals put on fat to keep them warm during the cold winter months. I can't wait!! It's such a fun afternoon.
Today was day 2 of Daily 5 learning read to self. WOW... that is all I can think to say... WOW. I had hoped to have us ready to go with all 5 stations before Christmas but I'm rethinking that goal. Yesterday we were only able to "read" for about 45 seconds. It was HORRIBLE! Truly I felt like running from my room screaming... so try 1 was a bust, but it gave us LOTS to talk about. We tried 2 more practice sessions yesterday and only got up to a minute. We also made our I Chart. Today we reviewed the I chart, I modeled how to retell a story we already knew, three little pigs. Then I had several children model : how read to self should look, how to retell, the different ways to "sit" and what the voice should be. We have a school wide voice level. I decided that read to self would need to be a 0 voice because so many of the children struggle with a whisper voice.
And then we practiced! Try 1- EPIC FAILURE!! Just under a minute, with LOTS of loud voices. So back to the carpet we went... more models- this time including more children modeling voice... and by practice 3 we had gotten up to a minute and half!! I feel like we have conquered a MAJOR beast! LOL... My biggest problem is having enough just right books. But I am working on that, thanks to reading A -Z and several sight word readers I am working to finish. We will work on these in a mini lesson and add them to their book boxes. I feel like it is a chicken and egg type problem. Since Kinders are just learning to read they don't have many choices in books or I don't have enough copies of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Brown Bear for the children to each have one in their book box, they don't have much ability to read for 3 minutes on day 1. And then the flip side... the kinders need to READ READ READ!!
There it is a re cap of my epic failure and the hope I have in building the materials that the children will need to be able to sustain reading to self ;)
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Keep going! It is all worth it when they sit and read and read and read!
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