In Pictures and In Words Book Study

This summer, I decided to join my fellow bloggers and do a book study. After reading what the book was about, I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to improve on how I teach writing and what I could do to make writing look different in my classroom. Mrs. Wills Kindergarten is kicking off this book study so I hope you can join us and to be able to share your ideas.


Here is my reflection from the first 6 chapters using the guided questions that have been given.

How might you explain to students that illustrating is composing?
Pictures provide so much information and can tell all readers what is going on in a picture or story. Pictures are also a guide to what might be happening next. I would share with my students that doing a 'picture sketch' would help them get their creative minds flowing and being able to create ideas with pictures in mind. Sometimes illustrations can be more of a idea creator then trying to come up with words.

How might your attitude towards writing affect your students' willingness to writing?
My attitude affects everything I teach. If I don't show excitement in my teaching then how do I expect my students to be excited to learn. I like to teach Kindergarteners to write but there are times when I get a in rut and feel like I'm running out of techniques to meet all my learners without it being the same ol' thing. Focusing on a different concept of writing has me already excited to what writing will look like that I'm hoping my students will also be excited to see writing in a different light.

How might you help students build stamina in their writing?
I use Daily 5 in my classroom, so I am very familiar with building students stamina. To build students stamina in writing, I would approach in the same manner I would do when we introduce Work on Writing. It would look a little different as to what time of day I would have for writing and also they would have blank made up books to work with instead of the notebooks they use for Daily 5. Students would also be familiar with the vocabulary and will have a good sense of what stamina is and be able to make those connections.

What language might you use with your students to talk about reading like a writer, bother as a writer of words and pictures?
When I talk about writing to my students, I already use the terms authors and illustrators and explain to them that they need to be good illustrators and authors. One way I would change this would be to say "now we talked about Eric Carle and how he does wonderful illustrations. I would like to see you do your best illustrations just like Eric Carle did in the story The Very Hungry Caterpillar." I would make more references to certain authors after we have talked about them by looking at their illustrations. I would also use the writing terms of planning and revision for my students to understand the vocabulary that will become familiar to them as they grow older.

Name several books (not perviously mentioned in this text) you would gather for your classroom's units of student on illustration.
I wish I was able to be in my classroom library right now so I could make a stack and be able to look through some books. Here are a few that I'm thinking off the top of my head.
Eric Carle books
The Crayon Box That Talked
Jan Brett books
If You Give A... series of books
Tops and Bottoms
*I know it's not the best list, but my mind is drawing a blank to some that I'm going to kick myself for not remembering.

Next on the agenda is Chapter 7, Ideas and Content. Can't wait to see what I can learn and read others thoughts.

School's Out for Summer

Well the end of the school year finally came to an end.  It was a rough year and I apologize for not keeping up on my blog.  There was a lot of things going on that blogging was not in the cards.  Thank you for all of those who visited and checked out some of the activities that we did this year.  Currently, we are in our last week of summer school and then my summer can officially begin.  One of my goals this summer is to do some blogging 'overhaul'.  KinderSpot will be getting a new look and new posts on a regular basis.  I hope all of you are having a good summer so far and thanks again for stopping by.  Stop in again in a few weeks to see all the new changes.

Objects in the Sky

We just finished up our Objects in the Sky unit for science. The students LOVED learning about the sun, moon, planets and stars. This is one of my favorite units to teach because the students get into the learning. On Tuesday, we had Star Lab come visit us. They gave us a little lesson about the planets and stars and then we got to go into the dome to view the stars and their constellations. The students enjoyed the experience and learned a lot about what is in our sky. Now it's time to take a little break from science and do some social studies. Our next big unit in Science will be plants.

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! I hope you all had a great day. We had a busy day in Kindergarten. It was our first day back from our little winter break and it was a party day! A little crazy but we survived. Bedtime will be coming early for Miss Evans tonight. We didn't do a lot of special activities today but I do want to brag about something we did accomplish. I got this activity from a unit I bought at TPT. You take the word Valentines and the students have to see how many words they can get for the letters in the word Valentines. Boy, did my students do an awesome job with this. We came up with about 20 words. There was some adult help but it was all the kids. A few of the words: seat, lines, see, and nine. I'm thinking we will need to do this activity again with a different word. Sometimes I underestimate my students on what they can do. Way to go K friends! Here are some pictures from our party. Enjoy and have a great rest of the week.

Happy 100th Day!

Yesterday, we celebrated the 100th day of Kindergarten. It's hard to believe that we are half way through the school year. The students had fun decorating their 100th day hats. The story, Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th Day of Kindergarten was read and the class did a following directions/learning activity. In writing, we wrote about what we would do with $100.00. Some of the responses were:

I would go on a train
I would give it to my mom :)
I would buy legos
I would buy a zoo.

The class also answered questions to what they would be doing in 100years. Here are some of those responses:

In 100 years, my favorite thing to do will be to watch TV.
In 100 years, my favorite thing will be to sleep.
In 100 years, my favorite thing will be to do nothing.
In 100 years, my favorite thing to do will be make sculptures.

In 100 years, I think my job will be a farmer.
In 100 years, I think my job will be a server at Pizza Ranch. :)

In 100 years, I will be living in a blue house
In 100 years, I will be living in a barn.
In 100 years, I will be living in a houseboat
In 100 years, I will be living in paradise. :)

In 100 years, my favorite food will be chicken
In 100 years, my favorite food will be pizza
In 100 years, my favorite food will be cake.

In 100 years, my favorite TV show will be America's Funniest Videos. (This friend started writing American's Funniest Videos by using her sound/phonic knowledge. When she was almost done, she erased the whole thing. I asked her why and she said there was a shorter way of writing it. Then she wrote AFV. I had to giggle to myself.)

So...as you can see we have a lot of prospective of what we have to look forward to in 100 years. We had a good day and now we are on the down hill slope. Can't wait to see what February has to offer.

Crazy Hair Day

Friday was Crazy Hair Day at school and boy was it crazy! Most of my students took part in this fun event. They all looked very cute with their hair all dolled up. Can't wait to see what we do in February!

Winter Fun

We are back in school after a nice two week break for the holidays. Students started back yesterday and we had a great day. Over the break, I found some awesome units from some outstanding Kindergarten teachers around the US. I didn't want to start our new math topic yet, so I pulled some math activities from these units. One of the activities was a math survey. The kids had to go around to 10 friends and ask the question, "Do you like marshmallows in your hot chocolate?" They loved this activity and am excited to try more. Today, I tried the other math activity which was a great introduction to our new math topic. The students had to see if they were taller than, shorter than, or same height as the snowman that I created. I loved this activity as well as the kids. They had fun making predictions and measuring themselves next to the snowman. It's fun being able to do something different then the curriculum. I'm hoping we can do more fun activities like this throughout the rest of the semester. Even though the weather here in Nebraska doesn't feel like January weather, we had to do something to get the feeling of winter.