The students have been trying their best to pay attention and work hard in Miss Weyandt's room! Every day they have the opportunity to earn dojo points for their behavior and good effort. When they reach 10 dojo points, they receive a Paw Print. When they reach 20 points, they get to pick a special pencil. When they reach 30 points, they get to scan a QR prize. The QR prizes vary between extra recess, eating lunch in Miss Weyandt's room, iPad time, etc. In the pictures below, Zacki earned a Paw Print, Harold earned a pencil, and Aliou and Jim earned lunch in Miss Weyandt's room. Once they reach 30 points, we start back over at 0 and they start earning again.
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In an attempt to keep parents informed, I have started a facebook page in addition to my blog and my twitter account. Please "like" my page at www.facebook.com/MissWeyandtsRoom
As a reminder, you can follow me on Twitter @WeyandtHMtigers The kindergarten reading groups spent last week making a first sound book. They looked through pictures of items related to the fall season and identified the first sounds. They then picked two pictures that started with the same first sound. For example, pilgrims and pumpkin both start with /p/. They then came up with something else that started with the same sound and drew a picture on the page. Each day the students made more pages to add to their books. They really enjoyed this activity and can’t wait to share it with their families. Look for their books to come home towards the end of the month! The first grade reading groups have been reading and writing consonant-vowel-consonant words. This past week, we read the poem “Big Black Cat.” This poem contains mostly short vowel words. The students loved the poem and get very excited for the ending!! We then made our own Big Black Cats and practiced writing CVC words on the whiskers. They turned out super cute!! Come stop by during parent teacher conference night and see their cats hanging outside Miss Weyandt’s door! The second grade reading group has been practicing a reader’s theater script for The Hallo-weiner by Dav Pilkey. The script contains 12 speaking parts. Each girl, including Miss Weyandt, is assigned 2 parts. We have been practicing to improve our accuracy, rate, and expression for each or our lines. The girls are really enjoying this and their fluency is improving! We hope to perform our play to some of the teachers and students very soon! The speech students have been making pumpkins targeting their speech skills. For the articulation groups, they practiced reading a pumpkin poem and highlighting their specific speech sounds that they read. They also generated a word list of items associated with fall. They picked out the words that had their speech sounds in them and wrote them on orange strips of paper to make a pumpkin. Some of the language students also made pumpkins to target their goals. One student who is working on identifying emotions wrote emotion words on her pumpkin. Another student who is working on synonyms wrote pairs of synonyms on his pumpkin. Ala'Mein and a few other students are working on increasing their knowledge of locational concepts. Locational concepts include above, below, between, beside, under, etc. Our students work on both identifying these concepts as well as following directions including these concepts. This week, Ala'Mein enjoyed using the iPad to follow directions containing locational concepts. Miss Weyandt gave him directions such as "put a dot above the house" or "put a star beside the square." He is doing a great job learning these concepts! Princess and Gavyn have been working hard on using context clues to help them determine the meaning of words. When reading a paragraph and answering a question, Miss Weyandt has them underline the clues from the text they used to come up with their answer. They are getting really good at finding clues to lead them to the correct meanings!
Zacki has been working hard to increase his social language knowledge. Currently we are working on defining the difference between a question and a comment. Tuesday he learned that a question is "something you ask someone", and a comment is "something you tell someone". When provided a spoken or written, question or comment, Zacki is learning to identify whether it was a question or comment. He is a diligent worker, and is highly motivated by dojo points, smiles, and positive reinforcement. Our first graders are working on reading and spelling basic CVC words (top, bat, run) and basic nonsense CVC words (pek, tup, mib). Just a few weeks ago, these three boys were able to say the sounds of each letter in the alphabet. Now they are learning to blend all those sounds together in their head in order to read words, and stories! During reading group, these boys are motivated by time limits, dojo points, and high fives. They are working hard to reach their own personal reading goals.
These first grade boys are rocking with their articulation skills! Here they are playing a game that enables each student to say their sound as many times as possible in a given amount of time. By incorporating a game, they get to have fun and learn at the same time. During articulation group we focus on each child's target sounds by repeating the sound numerous times in syllables, words, and sentences; soon they will be repeating the correct sound in conversation too! The most important part of articulation therapy is repetitions in order to train their mouth muscles to move in a new and improved way! Lots of positive reinforcement, and specific instructions are two other key components to helping a child say a sound the right way.
This week is a progress monitoring week for DIBELS. All of the students who receive reading intervention are being reassessed on their skills. After they are assessed, Miss Weyandt shares their new scores with them. They immediately go to the graphs and move their name up the graph to their new score. We discuss whether or not they have met the goals they previously set for themselves (identified by the yellow stars). If they have met their goal, they pick a new goal that they hope to reach in 2 weeks when we progress monitor again. Those students who reach their goals get to wear a special sticker letting everyone know of their awesome accomplishment. Miss Weyandt was very pleased with the majority of students and their outstanding reading growth!
Brandon has been working hard on improving his reading comprehension skills. He's been reading paragraphs and using the text to help him answer questions. He's also been expanding his vocabulary by naming synonyms (words that mean the same) and giving definitions about words with multiple meanings, such as sail and sale. Click the links below to see more examples of synonyms and multiple meaning words.
Kyjuan and Darius are also working on their reading comprehension skills by practicing answering literal and inferential questions about passages that they read. Literal questions refer to questions in which the answers are clearly stated in the passage. For example, the name of the main character. Inferential questions require students to combine their prior knowledge with clues in the text to determine the answers. For example, the passage may say that Billy zipped up his coat and put his gloves on before heading outside. The students would use their prior experiences and clues from the text to determine that the story took place during winter. Miss Weyandt requires them to underline the answers or the clues for their answers in the text. This helps them double check their work and make sure that they are using appropriate strategies to correctly answer the questions.
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