Today children signed up for school clubs, which has been a long standing multi-age tradition in our school. Starting next week children will leave our classroom for an hour at the end of the day every Friday, and join a group of kids with similar interests, aged 4 to 10. Every teacher at EVCS teaches a non-academic club (such as gardening, chess, cooking or recycled art), and every child participates in the club of their choice. Clubs are a great chance for children to explore their interests and connect with children and teachers they don't get the chance to interact with every day. We love to see the big kids mentor the little kids and see new multi-age friendships blossom. Fall clubs will run from Friday, October 24th to mid December. There is another semester of clubs in the spring.
These last 2 weeks your children have been hard at work on their writing. Our first writing unit, Journal Writing, is coming to a close. Even though we will be moving on to a new unit next week, writing about ourselves, we will continue to write in journals for the entire school year. Students have learned the routine for journal writing: 1) write the date, 2) think of what to write about, 3) draw your idea, 4) write the words. There is a broad range of writing abilities in our classroom, and everyone can access writing at their level. Some kids only draw, some label a picture with a couple of letters for the first sounds of a word like M for Mommy, some try their hand at writing words based on how they sound and others can write complete sentences on their own. We have introduced our Word Wall to help kids learn high frequency words and incorporate them in their writing. The first words to go up have been I, a, to, the and went. Next words will be am, like, can and going. Your children really love to draw and write, and we love to see what kind of writing comes from their pencils every morning!
In Reading Workshop we have started focusing on independent reading. We are almost done assessing the whole class for their knowledge of letter names, sounds and recognition of high frequency words. For those who are ready we are assessing their reading and matching them with a reading level so we can begin to provide them with books at their "just right" reading level. This week we taught everyone to use a very important reading tool: their pointer fingers! We practiced pointing slowly through pictures in storybooks and nonfiction books to see all the details. This will be a skill our little readers will soon transfer to pointing at words as they read. Our independent reading routine is to turn our chairs back to back so each child can focus on his or her own reading without distractions.
In Social Studies the kids' self portraits are coming along, now drawn, painted and outlined. Next week they will add a body to their head and arms to complete a life-sized piece of art that will hang in our room all year long.
Thanks for encouraging your children to bring in natural artifacts from trees. Our science center during morning work is brimming with interesting leaves, nuts and seed pods. Today we did leaf rubbings in Tompkins Sq Park, which would be fun to do at home too!
Happy fall!
love,
David & Clara
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