In one of our recent faculty meetings, we discussed the importance of telling parents and other educators where the “meat” or skills are in the lessons that we teach.  In traditional schools, parents can easily see the specific skills because worksheets are sent home that show the exact drill & practice that was done.  At AEEC, we do teach skills but we do it in an integrated way.  Our methods are grounded in pedagogy given to us by leading researchers in early childhood development and education.  Please know that your child is learning the skills necessary for challenges that will be presented to them in upcoming years.  However, they are not learning them in isolation or with worksheets and practice drills.  We learn skills in context to the situations that these skills will be used.  Therefore, our children do not just memorize needless skills.  Rather, they also learn how to use and apply the skills that they have learned.   

For my part, I will try to do a better job of informing you of the things we are doing in our classroom.  That way you can see the learning that may seem hidden in our activities.  If any of you ever have questions or concerns about what your child is learning, please contact me.  I will be glad to show and talk to you about what we are doing in our classroom.

Morning Meeting

Analyzing data is an important math skill that helps children develop mathematical understanding.  This is especially important in problem solving.  Therefore, we do this daily in our classroom.

 Each morning, when the children come in they use the Smart Board to sign in.  The picture graph they are creating provides us with data about who is here as well as information about our lunch count.  Each and every morning the children look at this graphical data and analyze it.   We talk about more and less, add the home and school lunches to find the sum of lunches we will have that day.  We subtract the number of students absent from the total number in our classroom to find out how many children are present.    

There are many more things that we do in our Morning Meeting and I will talk more about that in next week’s newsletter.

 Shared Journals 

We are still focusing on our questioning and negotiation skills.  I am pleased to see that the children are asking questions that really dig for more details and information.  They are making the shift from questions like:  “What did it look like? and “What color was it?” to questions that ask for clarification of information.  Now students are asking things like:  “Why did you choose to go there?”, “Can you tell me what a _____ is?”  and “What do you mean by ____ ?”   These types of questions help the children process the stories that they have heard.  They also help them as they retell the details in their writing.

 In addition, at journals, we also are focusing on letter sound association, segmenting the sounds in words, sight word recognition, punctuation and the numerous other conventions that we use daily when we write.

 Theme

This week, we spent a great bit of time researching some of the bigger circuses.  We also began to generate our list of things that the children want to know about the circus.  These questions will guide our research in upcoming weeks.

 Shared Reading

We read several books this week, during Shared Reading.  With every book, we talked about many of the conventions of print that readers know and use.  We talked about the title and how the author gives us hints about the story with the title.  We also talked about the title and dedication pages and what information is given on these pages.  In addition, we found sight words, word chunks and talked about how capital and lower case letters are used in writing.

 These are the books we read this week:

Froggy Get’s Dressed:  In this book, Froggy wakes up from hibernation to play in the snow.  However, he forgets some important articles of clothes.  With this story, we made a web of things you can wear to play in the snow.  (sounding out words)

Mouse Mess:  In this book, a mouse sneaks out of his home and makes a mess as he finds food for dinner.  With this book, we talked about nocturnal animals and how simple machines help us move things.  We also reviewed beginning sounds and began a class book called Hungry Mouse.

Van’s Sandwich:  This book is about a little boy who builds a monster sandwich to share with his friends.  With this book, we went on a word search and found the special sounds or sight words that we have been working on.

Center Time

Preparations for Goldie’s funeral are in full swing.  This week, we worked on the speech that will be read during the service.  We also drew out a plan for her headstone.   

We also had several children work on books at writing center, play math games, construct buildings and train stations at block center.

Jason evaluates his journal entry using the Smart Board.