Scurrying Sunday!

Let me start off with saying GO PACK GO!

I just had to get that out of my system!  Anyways, every Sunday I'm going to post what we are doing this coming week in Room K2.  I don't know about you but I am definitely a Sunday planner.  It's rare and most definitely shocking if my plans are finished before Sunday.  Shocking indeed.

That's why I'm calling my Sunday post "Scurrying Sunday".  Sometimes it's a race to the finish to get everything planned out or last minute...OH YAs for things I forgot I wanted to do or try this week.

I'm working on a Weekly Planner to put on here for you to see my schedule and what we are doing for that week...but it isn't finished yet.  :(  Look for it next weekend!

So instead I'll do some subject headings and just type some of the main things this week.  

My stations do not take much changing or prep work since it is basically Daily 5.  I do put new and take out old Word Work activities on occasion to keep things fresh and match the skills they are working on in small and whole group.  I did just add a couple of activities from my Pocket Pack to the Word Work station.  My kinders have loved using the HUGE pocket chart since the beginning of December when I introduced it.  Don't know why we hadn't been using it before!  Here's a some of my kinders in action with the Pigs in the Mud CVC Match.

I am also putting up my new Write the Room: CVC labels around the room for students to find during word work.  I also made a couple more clipboards for the room that are glitterific!

Guided Reading Groups:

I have 1 low group, 3 on groups, and 1 exceeding group.  Here's the skills we are doing in each group this week.

Low:

• Tracking print.  Christmas break did a number on our memories.  We are doing lots of practice with print tracking.  
• Letter sounds and basic sight words.  We still struggle with this.
• Reading Level 1 books.

On:

• CVC words- making them ourselves and also sounding them out without picture help.
• Reading Level 2 books.  Working on comprehension skills.
• Practice Quarter 3 sight words (we use the Fry First 50)

Exceeding:

• Diving into Silent E word practice.
• Reading Level 3 and 4 books.  Comprehension skills and retelling.
• Quarter 4 words.  This group has already mastered our new words that we work on till March. 

This week we are really focusing on characters, setting, and main events in a story.  We will be reading various fiction stories and talking about the characters and main events in the stories that are in order.  For phonics in whole group we will be practicing blends and digraphs.

Most of this quarter is dedicated to Informational writing.  We are continuing to learn about penguins and also polar bears.  Students will be writing a fact they know about those animals for the week.  I'm challenging many of my students to write multiple sentences.  Our minilessons are about adding more details to our sentences...or adding another sentence.  We also will be focusing on stretching out those tricky words.

Addition!  We started addition last week.  We use Pearson's EnVision Math curriculum.  We have a video and then the students do a guided section with me and then their independent section by themselves.  We will be adding the plus sign this week in our lessons and also the equal sign.  It started out slow last week with just practicing 1 and 2 is 3.  Slowly doing the full equation this week.  On Thursday we will be finishing the topic by reviewing.  Friday I have sub so I will be having the students do a practice sheet to practice the full addition sentence with the plus and equal signs.  We will also be making an anchor chart tomorrow about ways to add: count on our fingers, use a number line, mental math, or draw a picture.  This will hang on our clothesline that runs across our classroom.

On Monday and Tuesday afternoons before Specials (which is our last thing in the day) we do Words Their Way. On Wednesday to Friday we do Science or Social Studies depending on the week or what our weekly theme or unit is.  This week we will finish up our Penguin Lapbooks.  We will also do a blubber experiment with a bucket of ice, Ziplocks, and Crisco.

Here's the Penguin Lapbooks we started last week:

Click the image to take you to the resource!  It's new in my store.  It includes different elements that you can cut and glue to build a lapbook or put into an interactive notebook.  I used those large packs of construction paper and folded them in half like a book.  Similar to the example on the cover of the resource.

Here's one of the cuties with his lapbook. The quote on the picture is what he said.  :) He sometimes can get sidetracked and super silly but he was incredibly focused making the cover and one of the elements that went inside.  It was fun to see!

Have a great week everyone!  Stay warm! & GO PACK GO!