Two Hoots and A Holler

Hoot #1

It is so hard to believe that Thanksgiving is already here, and Christmas is right around the corner.  Time flies when you're having fun!   We are thankful that we are off the week of Thanksgiving because the days leading up to it have kept us super busy!  We have had a Veteran's Day Program, train safety presentation and visitors, a field trip, and our Thanksgiving feast!  

Our Veteran's Day program is always a big hit!  It is a Walls tradition to have this awesome program.  It takes a lot of preparation to make it happen from the staff, but it is so worth it!  We love that we have the opportunity to honor and celebrate all of our veterans.  

Obie, the little train, was brought to our school from CN Railway!  The students always have so much fun learning about train safety and riding the train around the school!  

Here we are at the Orpheum in Memphis, TN waiting on the Rhythmic Circus to begin!  The show was very entertaining and fun! 

We celebrated Thanksgiving by eating lunch in our best Thanksgiving attire with all of our kindergarten friends!  The students loved making their hats and vests!  They even got to eat lunch on their place mat that they made! 

This week has us like.... 

Hoot #2

We are so proud of how much progress our kids are showing!  We have been working really hard on writing and math.  We have began writing in our journals daily, and the students are loving it!  They are taking so much pride in their stories.  We also have been learning part-part-whole in math.  This is a very hard skill to understand at first.  We are beginning to see our students understand the concept because of their hard work and perseverance.  The best part about all of it is that we are seeing our students become more independent and grow into risk takers and problem solvers...and that makes our hearts SO happy!  

 

This Week's Holler...

This week we would like to holler at Herding Kats in Kindergarten.  We love her fall math activities to use with our dollar spot finds at Target!  We also love how she incorporates videos into her blog posts! It makes teaching a whole lot easier when teachers like her share all that they know!

 

Two Hoots and A Holler

Hoot #1

We learned all about pumpkins last week.  On Monday the students walked into the room to see a HUGE pumpkin in their classroom.  We carved a pumpkin on Friday after reading Pumpkin Jack,  Pumpkin, Pumpkin, and reading non fiction texts on pumpkins.  The students loved getting to use their 5 senses to explore their pumpkin.  We got to smell, touch, see our pumpkin.  We tapped on the pumpkin to see what it would sound like, and the class determined it sounded like a drum.  I had a few that were brave enough to taste the pumpkin.  They decided that pumpkin pie tastes a lot better! 

We dug through all the pulp to get all of the seeds.  Our pumpkin had over 550 seeds!  Each student took home 20 pumpkin seeds to plant at home, and the rest were planted at school.

 We voted on what kind of face our pumpkin would have.  It was a tie, so we carved a two faced pumpkin!  One side was happy, the other was scary. 

After carving and planting, we did pumpkin brace maps.  The students could easily label the parts of a pumpkin and recall the vocabulary used because of this wonderful hands-on experience! 
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Hoot #2

Over the past week, we have had a lot of visitors!  We had the librarian from our town's public library come read to us!  They love listening to stories! 

We also had Ned's Kindness Adventure come to our school! 

 The Kindness Adventure assembly shows that kindness is the key to making friends and respecting others.  It was very entertaining for students.  The students were engaged and interested the entire time!  It had a very good message.  It allowed students to see schools and children from a different culture, and learn to respect others' cultures. We are selling "Kindness Treasures" this week in our school's snack store to help students to remember to be kind and pay it forward. 

GO OUT AND SPREAD KINDNESS LIKE CONFETTI!!  

ALL IT TAKES IS A SMILE OR SOME KIND WORDS! 

 

This Week's Holler...
This week we have been really focusing on our writing.  Students have had a very hard time with writing this year.  After stumbling across a blog about writing from Abigail over at Kindergarten Chaos, we decided to take a few steps back and start over.  We have been working really hard on our "Drawing Journal" and focusing on how important illustrations are when writing.  We have seen so much improvement in our students writing!  We are moving on to labeling and lists next.  We loved her character cards used to help students understand the importance of a setting and adding details.  Check out these illustrations from some of our kinders using the character cards! 

We literally went from scribbling on paper to actual pictures!  Hop over to her blog to read all about it!  Thanks Abigail for sharing your ideas!  You Rock!

 

Two Hoots and A Holler

Hoot #1

 As many of you know, we went to the Ron Clark Academy in December. Since our trip, we have been implementing many of the things that we learned. Our tables are small and our supplies are stored in the middle of our table, so standing on tables would be a little difficult. Sooooo, we stand in chairs!!! That is right! At this point, during math, I introduce all new skills. Once I feel that the students have an understanding of the skill, I leave them to do the teaching! Yes, my students become teachers. I use large craft sticks to choose which student will be the teacher. That child goes to the front of the room to begin to walk students through skills such as counting on, addition, and subtraction. The student teacher will ask a question. If a student wants to respond, they must be the first one to stand in their chair. He/she is then called on by the student teacher.  If another child disagrees with the answer, that child then stands up and begins their statement with, " I disagree because..." Students can not move on to the next problem until all students are in agreement. Students show that they are in agreement by giving a "thumbs up"  hand gesture.  The same procedure happens when we are at the carpet for reading or writing.  The students simply stand where they are in order to respond.   The students love doing this! They love taking control of learning and contributing to their classroom. They have learned to support and disagree with each other calmly and with evidence.

I am so proud of them!

Below are pictures during our math time.

Hoot #2

We are busy gearing up for our Boosterthon Fun Run. This takes fundraising to whole new level! Students are sponsored by friends and family by how many laps they run! It is a great way to earn money for your school and get healthy all at the same time!  During the week of collecting money, students are given character traits that they learn about daily along with a sticker.The students are given prizes daily for the pledges that they collect.  For every $30 raised, a local family will receive 3 meals.  This is an awesome experience where everyone gets to participate whether you helped raise money or not, AND money raised helps the school and families in the community.  We recommend that you look into for your school! We have never seen our students so excited about a fundraiser before!

This Week's Holler...

This week's holler goes out to Kimberly Jordano at Kinder By Kim!  We have followed her for years through her website (kinderbykim.com).  We saw her at the I Teach K! conference about 10 years ago in San Diego, CA.  We have been in LOVE with her ever since!  She has some awesome books packed full of activities that are theme based.  We were ecstatic to learn that she has a blog and a TPT store!  Go check it all out, and you will see why we think she deserves this week's holler!

Two Hoots and A Holler: Collaborative Classrooms

Hoot #1

This year our school is incorporating Collaborative Classroom into our ELA curriculum.  The Collaborative Classroom includes the programs Making Meaning, Being A Writer, and SIPPS.  We began this program with our kinders on the first full week of school.  It is a learning process for students, as well as teachers.  During our Making Meaning lesson, we talked about things we can do after our read aloud, My Friends.  We carried it over to a shared/interactive writing lesson.  The students got to write and share that they can write their name.  This chart is hanging in the classroom for students to revisit and read.  

As some of you may remember from last school year, our classrooms under went some renovations over the summer.  They are still in the process of putting the final touches on our rooms.  While we are waiting for everything to get done, these beauties got delivered to us!!  You have never seen teachers so excited over an easel!  These easels are like the Cadillac of easels!  They have everything you could possibly need or want!  These really help us out when we are making anchor charts or interactive writing with our students during our ELA lessons!   These easels hold all of our materials we need to incorporate Collaborative Classrooms curriculum!  And for that, we are in LOVE with these! 

Hoot #2
We have already begun our center, workstations, or whatever you decide to call them!  We are kind of old school, and we still call them centers.  Our students look forward to this time each day.  They are so excited and engaged, that most of the time we do not even realize we missed our rest/quiet time!  Students actually cheer when they know its time for centers! Take a look at what our kids are doing during center time...

Students use playdough to make 2D shapes.  

 

Students are matching letters using these letter mats and letter tiles. 

 

Students are using pattern blocks to form letters.  They are also making sets on ten frames with number mats and unifix cubes.  

Students are sorting buttons by color.  

This Week's Holler...

This week's holler goes out to Tales of the Sassy Teacher! Melinda's blog is too cute! We love the lemons! She is a sassy teacher that has taught K-2. Her children actually change classes!! We did this for a short time ourselves! We really loved the learning experience that we gained from trying it. We really enjoyed the reading Melinda post about field trip prep. We have been busy this week planning all sorts of trips and will take any tips we can get! Melinda has a ton of topics for you to choose from! Be sure to check her out!! Happy teaching everyone!