Stamina

We have been working on building our read to self  stamina since the first month of school!

When my kinders got to about 8 minutes I then introduced work on writing, then word work, and listening to reading. I don't think I want to do read to someone, so far now I am doing the "daily 4."

Today they finally did it, and read to self for 20 minutes!! I am so proud of them! 

This is my favorite party of the day now. I was really going back and forth whether it was worth all of this training, and now I really see that yes it is worth it! I can finally work individually with student or do small guided reading groups. I can't wait! I want to finish building their writing, word work, and listening stamina until the end of the month, which is one more week. Then I will finally introduce choice as well as begin to include CAFE strategies.

Plants and Daily 5

Oh kindergarten...

Learning routines is taking longer than I had anticipated.

I just want to press fast forward!

This week we learned about plants.

First we learned about the different parts of the flower.

I found a cute parts of the plants YouTube video from Dr. Jean with the 

tune of heads, shoulder, knees, and toes. 

This really helped my kinders remember the parts of a flower.

We then did a free activity to label the parts of the flower that 

I found on Teachers Pay Teachers from The Crazy School Teacher.

They turned out good! 

They had a lot of fine motor practicing as they cut everything out and glued!

The next day we talked about what plants need in order to grow.

I found this super cute free interactive science notebook 

on Teachers Pay Teachers from All Students Can Shine.  

I loved this interactive page!

It was a little tricky for my kinders when it came time to glue

and fold them into their notebooks, but they turned out great.

This is the first time I am doing Daily 5...

I really wish I could somehow magically find a website all about Daily 5 in kindergarten.

If you have any suggestions about the Daily 5 in kindergarten I would truly love to read it!

We have been doing read to self for the past few weeks.

The majority of the students can sit in one spot and read quietly, 

but they don't all read the whole time because of their stamina.

But we have been able to make it to 9 minutes!

BUT I have ONE student (my barometer student) 

who constantly makes noises and doesn't read the whole time. 

It is very frustrating, because the rest of the students can't build their stamina.

I did give this student a small basket with a sand timer and a lego car.

When the time is up, the student could switch the timer and play with the car.

Then when the time is up the student would switch the timer and read.

This would continue until the student would run out of stamina.

But I would sit next to the student to remind them...and this might take a while.

Today I noticed this ONE student is sometimes just looking at the timer waiting for it to run out...suggestions?!

Here is my "barometer" student in their own space.

Here are some of my students reading in my library and one in a basket!

The basket was a hit!

Here is my Read to Self I-Chart

My Stamina chart