It’s week 11 of school for us! Week 1 means we’re continuing Word Family Bootcamp and really diving into blending and decoding CVC words! We actually do some blending and segmenting during ABC BOOTCAMP but now it will be our focus! I’m pumped to see them apply the knowledge from ABC BOOTCAMP! We are continuing our district-mandated Wit And Wisdom requirements, and our foundational skills curriculum. And this week, we’re doing our Pumpkin Research Project, counting tasks, and Halloween art projects! This year, my goal is to show you that you can use our TKS resources along with required curriculums so you’ll see that happening throughout the school year!

Note about Halloween: we will celebrate Halloween in our classroom on November 1 due to picture and teacher conferences on Friday. I feel like this is actually a good idea since Halloween is on Sunday and the kids will be on a sugar high all day anyway!

District Guidelines

• We are required to wear masks indoors but not at recess.
• We can have shared supplies and centers while maintaining 3 feet of distance when possible.
• We are keeping our enhanced cleaning procedures (wipe down surfaces throughout the day, steam sanitize the room daily, hand sanitizer/hand washing throughout the day, steam mop the floors daily, etc)

Lesson Plans

As always, you can download our weekly lesson plans by clicking on the image!

You can get our EDITABLE lesson plan template by clicking on the image below:

Word Family BOOTCAMP

After ABC BOOTCAMP, we start Word Family Bootcamp! This is when we take the sounds and letters we learned in ABC BOOTCAMP and begin applying those skills to reading and writing CVC WORDS! Word Family Bootcamp is done a bit differently because we do a word family every 2 days. Day 1 is the circle chart and day 2 is word building and word writing. So we do two-word families a week and Friday we practice blending and writing! I was so proud of my kids in the first week of Word Family Bootcamp! Their decoding/blending skills were great! The writing was good but we definitely have to keep working on those fine motor skills!

As with all of our TKS BOOTCAMP components, we start with the whole group lesson using a circle chart! Students generate words, I draw the picture of course (it’s a must!), and then we segment the sounds to spell the word. Then we work on blending the word.

And yes, Word Family Bootcamp and the entire TKS BOOTCAMP curriculum is aligned to the science of reading. And it has been from day 1 because that’s how I was taught to teach reading so it’s what I’ve always done!

Sight Word 60!

This week we are continuing Sight Word 60! After spending the summer learning more about the science of reading, we are continuing with Sight Word 60. We have always had decoding and encoding (writing) of the words as part of Sight Word 60 so we will continue that and will increase the amount of decoding and writing. We will also use orthographic mapping and we’re changing our order of sight words to align to the 109 most frequent words (even though we do 100 words…). You can learn all the details of how Sight Word 60 works on the linked blog post and you can get everything you need for Sight Word 60 in our Sight Word 60 creation!

Wit And Wisdom And Read It Up: Rap A Tap Tap

This year our district has adopted a new curriculum, Wit And Wisdom. We are being required to use the curriculum, but we will continue to add in our own fun, creative lesson plans, ideas, and resources. (If you use Wit And Wisdom, be on the lookout for resources from us!) And we will continue to bring the FUN to kindergarten!

This week our story is Rap A Tap Tap. This is a new story for our class and we are loving it and we are learning so much about Bojangles! My kids also love to tap dance every chance they get! If you don’t have this book, I highly recommend it. It’s engaging and easy. There’s great vocabulary, great comprehension lessons, and great lessons on equality and tolerance.

Last week we worked on retelling, predictions, and prepositions using the story! And the kids acted out the story as I read aloud each page!

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Pumpkin Research Project

This week we’re wrapping up our Pumpkin Research Project!

We’re working on labeling and the life cycle of pumpkins. Last week, we started our schema map and did our can/have/are chart!

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Math

This week we are continuing to adhere to our district math tasks and lessons. This week our focus is on counting and introducing counting on. I will share these tasks in a later blog post so you can see them in action! Here are the tasks for the week:

Monday-sort and count. We will sort pattern blocks (or maybe Target mini erasers) and count how many of each! We will write the numbers on whiteboards!

Tuesday-Goodnight Zoo. We will read Goodnight Gorilla and count the animals in the story. We will have the students make the number on their ten frames.

Pumpkin Measurement

This week we will also be measuring ourselves using pumpkins! This lesson is great for learning abut estimation and working on counting!

Mad Science Thursday

This week for Mad Science Thursday we will see if pumpkins sink or float!

Halloween Art Project

We will paint monsters! We fold the paper in half. Students squirt paint in the middle of the paper and rub the paper. Then they add features to their monsters!

These are the resources we are using in our classroom this week:

SIGHT WORD READER AND POEM FREEBIE!

For more information, check out these posts: