Making Inferences

What a week! Although it was so nice to see my little owl friends again after our week off, the rain made our week a little crazy.  We were only able to participate in Walk-A-Thon on Friday and we spent the majority of the week inside, avoiding the pouring rain.  Today has been beautiful though so I hope you take some time to go outside!

One of the many things we learned this week was inferring.  We have been talking about using our schema (prior knowledge or what we already know about something) to help us make predictions and share connections when we read.

Well, this week we took that a step farther and learned the word: infer.  Inferring is when you take your schema (prior knowledge) and clues (in this case: illustrations in a story) to make inferences.  

For example, we talked about how if we were walking to the lunch room and we smelled something sweet in the air, we might infer that cookies, brownies or some other type of tasty treat was being made.

Once again, I stole this idea from a great blog I found on Pinterest.com.  We practiced our inferring skills this week by using this mystery box.  I told the kids I put something in the box and they made guesses as to what they thought it might be.  Then, I gave them clues.  Using their schema (what could fit in this size  box) and the clues I gave them (ex: It is a rectangle) the students made inferences.  It was a fun activity and one student guessed the actual item: a greeting card! We practiced inferring with the story No David! as well.  Please encourage your child to work on this skill at home with their JRL book.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.  I'm going to go for a bike ride!

Reading Strategies

We have been working on our reading strategies and comprehension skills so much this year.  The growth and progress the students have made just floors me.  It really has been so fun to watch them take the skills I've taught them and go with it.  I decided that the students need more opportunities to show off their abilities .  One way we do this is through a shared reading during the day.  I ask for volunteers to be the 'teacher' and read the words on the chart to the rest of the class.  Sometimes there are tricky words in the reading so the 'teacher' has to decide which strategy to use.  The 'teacher' then asks the class what strategy he/she used.  The kids have been doing really well with this and I have noticed a big improvement in their reading.  Keep it up owls!

How-To Blow a Bubble

Happy Spring Break! I hope you have had a great week so far wherever you are.

 Just before break started our classroom finished up our How-To writing unit.  This was a very fun unit to teach.  The students and I thought about things we know how to do very well (ex: walk a dog, make a pizza, get ready for recess, etc.) We then picked three activities and created a scaffold of each step needed for each activity.  The students created How-To stories about each of their activities.  Their stories included a title, cover, illustrations and all of the steps written in complete sentences.  One of the things we focused on in this unit was the use of transition words (ex: first, next, then, and last).

Since Thursday was our last day together before break, I decided we needed a fun way to wrap up our How-To writing unit.  After brainstorming ideas and looking on Pinterest.com, I decided Thursday's activity would consist of bubblegum, glue sticks and construction paper.  That's right - I gave 25 kindergarten students a piece of bubblegum and taught them how to blow a bubble with it.  It was actually kind of hilarious!

We had a great time with this activity and we were able to create a scaffold of the steps of How-To blow a bubble.  The kids did a great job with it and the self-portraits they created with the construction paper and glue turned out awesome!

I hung their work up in our classroom so if you have the chance to stop in you should definitely check it out!

Enjoy the rest of your break! I look forward to seeing my kindergarten friends at school on Monday!