Categories Literacy, Math, S.T.E.A.M., Weekly Lesson Plans

Schedulin Sunday: Addition And Subtraction, Bats, CVC Words, And Parent Conferences

Week 11 of kindergarten is a four-day week because we have family conferences this week! We’re continuing Word Family Bootcamp, adding and subtracting, learning about bats, and wrapping up Rap A Tap Tap and the first unit of our reading curriculum!

Lesson Plans

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WORD FAMILY BOOTCAMP

We have a required foundational skills curriculum that we follow and supplement with our TKS BOOTCAMP resource, especially for extra practice and small group work! Our TKS BOOTCAMP curriculum works with ALL curriculums or as a stand-alone resource! This week, we are continuing Word Family Bootcamp to focus on CVC words, blending and decoding words, writing words, and lots of word chaining!

Word Family Bootcamp is about taking the sounds we learned in ABC BOOTCAMP and using them to read words. We do two word families a week. Day 1 is the circle chart, where we segment sounds, spell the word, and blend the word. We also discuss rhyming words. When working with the sounds we use all 3 sounds in the word and practice smooth and bumpy blending. Day 2 is word blending, word chaining, and word writing. In small groups, we use decodable readers, word chaining, and look-alike words to differentiate instruction.

Word Family Bootcamp is an all-inclusive resource that is aligned to the science of reading! Word Family Bootcamp includes whole group lessons, small group lessons, decodable readers and centers!

We also have an intervention hour, and our team has decided to focus on beginning sounds using picture sorts! So this week, we’re doing c, g, i, h. We are using our Beginning Sounds Picture Sorts resource! We used these last week, and you could see a noticeable difference as the week went on. This week, the plan is to make them more independent, and during this time, I can pull additional small groups.

Reading

Once again, this year, we’re using our required reading curriculum and supplementing it with our Read It Up! resources. This week, we are wrapping up the book Rap A Tap Tap and wrapping up the first unit of the curriculum. FINALLY! If you don’t use this book in your class, it’s a must! Not only are we learning about Bojangles, but the story is great for comprehension lessons!

This week, we’re working on wrapping up the story with a focus on prepositions and vocabulary. We completed our weekly task. We’re also going to be starting the end of the unit of assessment which is days of cutting and pasting. Days. Cut. Paste. I have so many questions…

For the prepositions, we use shoes! We have different colored shoes and I give directions using prepositions and the students glue the shoe onto the paper. Then we use the prepositions to describe where the shoe is.

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 continuing addition and subtraction! We introduced these skills last week, and I was impressed with how well the kids did! This week is more focused on the equations! But we have two days to do some extra stuff, so we are GETTING OFF THE BOAT AND GETTING ON THE BOAT!

Get off my boat and get on my boat are the best for introducing and practicing addition and subtraction. Why? It’s hilarious and gets the kids involved in the math, so they grasp the concepts. We made a boat on the floor using Sit Spots tape.

For subtraction, we GET OFF MY BOAT! I have some kids get on the boat. I make some kids get off the boat. And that’s the answer.

For GET ON MY BOAT, we have some kids on the boat and some swimmers swimming around the boat. I yell, “SHARK,” and the swimmers jump on the boat. We count to find our answer!

Since this week’s focus is equations, I’ll have the kids write the equations on their papers!

To see these in action, check out the videos!

We’re also going to do some monster math in small groups. I’ll be pulling some small math groups to work with the kids who need extra practice and support. We’re going to use candy corn and these fun monsters that I made to add and subtract!

Click the image for your FREE DOWNLOAD!

Bats 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 learn about bats using our Bats Research Project!

We use read-alouds and class discussions for our research. We record our learning on graphic organizers. This week, we will label a bat, do a true-false sort to share what we’ve learned about bats, and finish our schema map! We will also graph if we think bats are creepy or cute!

Students use their Bats research journal to record their learning throughout the research project!

Mad Science Thursday

This week, for Mad Science Thursday, we’re doing exploding ghosts!

Halloween Art Projects

We will do a directed drawing of a bat, a directed drawing of a witch, and make monsters with paint!

Parent/Family-Teacher Conferences

This week is conferences! I look forward to talking with families because we cannot do this without family support, so I love the opportunity to welcome them into the classroom, share their child’s progress, and give them some concrete ideas of things they can work on!

For our conferences, I start by asking the families if they have any questions and what they would like to discuss. Then, we use our conference forms to discuss students’ progress and successes, and we give the family-specific suggestions for things to work on at home.

We also provide the families with the student details report from ESGI! This provides them with a visual, easy-to-understand data that shows what we’ve assessed, their answers, and their growth!