We have so many talented parents at KRCS! Before we ate a fun guitar snack created by Davis’ mom, Davis’ dad shared his musical gifts with us.
Ben’s dad also shared his musical gifts with the children a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, it was the Friday I was sick and I wasn’t there to take any pictures. The children are still talking about the double neck guitar!
We look forward to using our actiVotes. ActiVotes are part of a fun learner response system used for assessment and polls on the activboard. Everyone has the opportunity to participate simultaneously, and the teacher can choose how the results are displayed. Children have instant feedback and teachers can track progress and download the data into a spreadsheet. When we watch a Brain Pop video, there is always a quiz following the video to test our recall and understanding of the information that was presented. What a great tool to engage everyone in the learning process!
A side note: Brain Pop Jr. is available as an app on your iPad.
Some words cannot be decoded using phonics skills and we refer to these words as rule breakers. They need to be memorized. I added the Word Jail this week, so that the children have a quick resource when they are writing. These are our “no excuse” words and they should be spelled correctly on our papers! I will add the sight words from this week’s spelling list after our test.
My goal is to teach your children literacy skills that they will use through their lifetime. I have become a fan of The Literacy Cafe written by sisters who teach in Washington State. I have instituted a CAFE menu in our classroom. CAFE is a synonym for restaurant. When you go to a restaurant, you use a menu to make your food choices. We use our CAFE menu to choose strategies to help us become independent readers. Each letter of the Menu stands for a component of reading – Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expand Vocabulary. I add strategies as we learn them and refer to these strategies when I read aloud, work with small groups, and confer with individual students.
