Happy week six of kindergarten! I actually plan these a week ahead of time, so I'm about to head into week five with my little loves. However, planning ahead has me SO excited for what this week will bring...

I have a favorite book when it comes time teach asking and answering questions, and it's Jon Klassen's This is Not My Hat. I love the simple illustrations and the creativity a reader is able to have based on what information they bring to the text. There are three vocabulary words I will pre-teach and highlight throughout the week: stole, notice, and belong.

I actually DON'T read the book the first day I teach questioning, because my students need to practice questioning first in a more familiar context. Asking and answering questions in your second language can be tricky, and many other of my student's first languages have a different structure to questions altogether. The first day, I will introduce the skill with a "mystery bag." Inside I will hide an everyday object, and they will ask questions to determine what is inside!

We will then practice the skill whole group, answering wh questions using the following resource on the SmartBoard: All About School WH Questions

Day two, we will review the skill and fill in the first third of this chart. Just from the title page and picture walk, what questions do we have about this text? I will think-aloud, and record any student questions as well. I will repeat this process for the next two days, as we re-read and create questions during reading and after reading the text.

Students will practice drawing to answer a question about a text--we will start with questions we have rehearsed answering such as "Who are the characters?" and share with a partner before recording our ideas in our journal. We will end the week with drawing to answer the main question of the text--WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT LITTLE FISH? I couldn't be more excited to teach this strategy with this text!

Writing: 
I am going to model one-to-one voice and print correspondence, which is writing production standard in my state. I plan to begin modeling writing with my students whole group. I want to teach each lesson twice: once with teacher modeling, and once with students writing dictated or interactive writing. My two lessons this week are: counting your words before you write, and re-reading what you wrote to make sure you didn't leave anything out. Day one they will see a model and begin to interact with the model, and day two of each lesson cycle they will finish the interactive part and go independently write. My students still require a lot of support and repetition, so I think this slowed gradual-release model will serve them best at this point in the year.

Mathematics:
Number writing! I don't have anything truly mind-blowing here. We will be matching numbers to quantities and doing a ton of handwriting practice so students feel confident in their ability to represent things with a number.

I will be emphasizing that numbers are a huge part of communication--we may even go on a "number walk" in the school to find examples of written numbers!

SEL:

We are on to lesson four of the Choose Love curriculum, which tackles how to deal with difficult feelings such as anger and frustration. The curriculum uses the sweetest video from Sesame Street:


I will be supplementing our SEL curriculum with I Feel Silly! by Jamie Lee Curtis, yoga from Cosmic Kids, and positive affirmations. I have a lot of kids who don't like themselves and have low self-confidence. Our transitions will be used to affirm ourselves and our abilities!