Pre-K: SHARK WEEK
This week we focused on the digraph -sh so we studied sharks through math and literacy.
Literacy:
Students experienced their first group reading in which our work was focused on following along with the reader who is reading aloud. They practiced using their "magic" finger to read the text left to right and follow the text to the next line. We also worked on reading comprehension, pausing after each page to discuss what we know and what we wonder. At the end of the activity we used information from the book to do a "Fact or Opinion" activity.
Students also "published" their first books! The storybooks were to exercise their imagination, put their thoughts into words and images, and begin inventive writing. This is a process we will continue through the end of the year in which we encourage the students to experiment more with expressive writing and "sounding out" words in order to spell and write them on paper. Students listen to the sounds that make up a word and spell them phonetically (spell it how it sounds). I encourage you to incorporate the same work at home! They took a lot of pride in writing those books and hope they shared them with you at home.
Math and Science:
We had fun learning about different types of sharks, shark anatomy, and what makes sharks unique. The children had fun measuring four different types of sharks and seeing how many students long each shark was. On Friday, they also had fun watching a live open ocean webcam of sharks, rays, and a huge school of fish from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Pretty amazing to observe animals in their natural habitat!
Social Learning and Studies:
Our Writing About Reading book was, Horsefly and Honeybee by Randy Cecil. A topical story about discovering the consequences of fighting with a friend, how to work together to get out of a problem, and learning how to prevent an argument next time. A lot of discussion has been going on about how friendship can be tricky, identifying those times, and brainstorming how to solve the problem successfully.
We also explored Mexico by listening to Mariachi music, reading a few beautiful stories, and creating a "cactus in the sunset" masterpiece.
