Week 7 of kindergarten is about ABC BOOTCAMP, pirates, learning about apples, and reading Last Stop On Market Street. And it’s the first five-day week we’ve had in a while, so it should be fun. And…it’s my birthday week so we will have a BIRTHDAY PARTY on Friday!
Lesson Plans
As always, you can download our weekly lesson plans by clicking on the image!
You can get our lesson plan templates here:
ABC BOOTCAMP
We have a required foundational skills curriculum that we follow, and we supplement it with our TKS BOOTCAMP resource. Our TKS BOOTCAMP curriculum works with ALL curriculums or as a stand-alone resource! This week, we’re wrapping up ABC BOOTCAMP! Not only are we focused on learning sounds and letters, but we’re also getting fine motor practice, working on handwriting, and establishing routines!
ABC BOOTCAMP has always been aligned with the science of reading and has been used in classrooms for 10 years! We focus on a sound/letter a day. Students can bring in objects for the sound to help us make our circle chart. Students share a word, we identify the sound, and I draw the picture. This is key. Drawing the picture is much more effective than using printed pictures because it activates the emotional parts of the brain for kids. DRAW THE PICTURES!
This week is: R, U, W, J
We’re going in the order of our foundational skills curriculum. ABC BOOTCAMP works in any order!
And, maybe my favorite part of ABC BOOTCAMP is the hats. They’re fun, they’re great for building vocabulary, and they give us daily fine motor practice for 26 days!
This week’s hats: yoga, keys, fox, question
We also do explicit handwriting instruction for each letter and work on letter formation.
ABC BOOTCAMP is classroom proven and highly effective with 80% mastery of sounds and letters in 26 days. ABC BOOTCAMP is all-inclusive and has everything you need to bring this resource into your classroom!
UPDATE: here’s our data from the halfway point of ABC BOOTCAMP!
ABC BOOTCAMP is all-inclusive and includes tools for small groups. We will focus on the sound/letter we’re learning each day.
Reading
Once again, this year, we’re using our required reading curriculum and supplementing heavily with our Read It Up! resources. This week, we’re using Last Stop On Market Street and how we use our senses to explore the world around us.
This week we’re focusing on answering questions, citing text evidence and details! Last week we did the evidence with what CJ sees and this week we’re working on what CJ hears!
We’re also making a “graffiti wall” according to our curriculum. I give the kids a piece of paper and they draw something from the story. They share it with the class and we add it to our graffiti wall which is just chart paper!
This week we’re also circling back to our questions chart. We generated questions about the story and now we will answer them!
Math
Our district has adopted a new math curriculum (AGAIN!), so we’re trying to figure it out because it’s a lot, and it’s not aligned with our state standards, so there’s that. We’re using the curriculum and supplementing it with our MATH IT UP! resources!
This week we’re starting to compare numbers! We are focused on comparing groups of objects and 1 more and 1 less (which seems like a huge jump to me since we are still working on counting….so we shall see…)
Our first lesson is comparing objects so we make collections of classroom objects and discuss which is greater and less.
We also do this by comparing objects using our grab and count activity. I made these mats using my hands! Students grab handfuls of cubes and compare which is greater and less!
To work on 1 more and 1 less we will use giant Uno cards! My thinking is we will put a card out and count to see which is 1 more. If we grasp that we will work on 1 less. I’m not going to stress the 1 less yet because we will come back to this later.
Apples Research Project
This week we’re using our science block (ya’ll! My new school has a legit 45-minute science/social studies block!!!) to wrap up our apple unit!
We use read-alouds and class discussions for our research. We record our learning on graphic organizers. This week we wrap up our Apple Research Project with the life cycle of the apple, a true false sort and completing our schema map.
Students use their Apple Research Project to record their learning throughout the research project!
We’re also doing apple prints! I love this project because it’s fun and so messy! I love seeing the different ways the kids make their patterns and prints!
We wrap up our Apple unit with an apple party. We eat a variety of apple foods and graph our favorite! And since we’re comparing numbers, we will talk about which is more and less!
Make sure to grab our all-inclusive, science of reading-aligned Apples Research Project to make planning and prepping for your apple unit easier!
Foodie Fun Friday
Pirates!
September 19 is National Talk Like A Pirate Day so we celebrate with read-alouds, painting pirates, using pirate centers, and dressing up like pirates!
Hispanic Heritage Month
Hispanic Heritage Month began on September 15, so we will be celebrating all month long. We use our Hispanic Heroes Research Project to learn about Hispanic Heroes over the month. We use a read-aloud and video for each hero. We complete our graphic organizer and discuss what each hero teaches us!
FREEBIES
WEEKLY RESOURCES
Click below for the resources we are using in our classroom this week.
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