What are we learning? - Fall 2014

I'm always curious to see what other kindergarten classes are learning about at any given time.  So I thought it would be fun to periodically post what my class has been learning.

 

Have you started using interactive journals?

 

I just started this year and my kids LOVE them!

 

They actually request math journal time.

 

So here are our math journals.

 

I bought these fun colored composition notebooks at Walmart back in July.  And of course I bought them the week before they went on sale. 

 

I decided we needed some fun labels for our journals. 

 

So, once again, using my fun clip art, I made some for our math and alphabet journals.

 

Then I printed them on shipping labels.  These are sheet sized sticker paper.

I cut them out, peeled off the paper backing, and stuck then on our journals.  So easy.

 

I'll post these as a freebie in my TpT store soon!

I bought some different math journal prompts, but then decided to just make my own so that I could make sure it covered our current standard.

I love these math journals.

 

They are great as a quick review of the previous day or as a quick assessment at the end of a lesson.  I also pulled them out during conferences in August to show parents their child's growth, or in some cases lack of growth.

These fun interactive ABC journals are from Cara Carroll's TpT store.  Click here to check them out.

These are also great for conferences.

Most people think we just learn about letters and numbers in kindergarten.  WRONG!

 

We do learn those, but we also learn so much more.

 

Like nouns.

Here we sorted nouns into different categories.  We did this whole group.

Then we practiced by coloring the different types of nouns with different colors.

Then we made a book about nouns.

We spent three weeks practicing nouns and my kids are still pointing out nouns all the time.

 

You can check out this nouns set here in my TpT store.

 

Or click the picture below.

 

 



We've also been working on composing and decomposing numbers.  I didn't spend much time on this skill last year, probably because I didn't really understand what it was.  Then I learned what an awesome skill it is to help students with number sense.  So this year, I made a very conscious effort to practice composing and decomposing numbers 1-10 as we learned each number.

 

I even taught composing and decomposing numbers to 10 using "Ten in the Bed" for my formal evaluation.  It was way fun!

 



This day we were working on decomposing the number six.

 

I put my kids into partner groups.  While one partner was counting out the manipulatives, the other partner was getting the recording page ready.

 

I forgot to take a picture of the recording page, but this is what it looked like.

 

I made several different versions of the workmats, but purposely used the version with the ten-frame at the bottom.  I wanted the student who was counting out the manipulatives to put them in the ten-frame, that way they could check to make sure they had the correct number and I could make a quick lap around the room and see that everyone had counted out the correct number as well.  It's a little difficult to practice decomposing the number 6 if you counted wrong and have 7 counters instead.





After counting out the manipulatives, Partner A would push some counters to one fishbowl and the rest to the other fishbowl.  Partner B would then record this on the recording page by drawing the correct number of counters in each bowl and labeling them with the numbers.

 

Then the partners switched roles and Partner B would show a different way to make the number six while Partner A recorded.

I did make cute little fish counters for this activity, but I just used the regular old foam counters in the beginning.  We used the fish counters later on once I knew they could be responsible for math  manipulatives.

 

This set is also available in my TpT store and includes lots of different workmats and counters.

 

Click the picture below to check it out.

 

 

 

Then we learned about verbs.  I used some of the noun sorting cards along with some new verb cards so we could sort.



Then we colored some more.  My kids love coloring.

 

Forgot to take pictures, but this was one of the pages we used.



 

We made another book, this time about Verbs.

 

We aren't finished yet, so I don't have pictures.  I'll post them when we finish.

 

Click the picture below to check out my Verbs set.

I would love to hear what your students are learning about!