Book Character Day & Our Fall Party!

On Friday, October 30, our class had the best time dressing up as our favorite characters for Book Character Dress Up Day!  We had all sorts of wonderful costumes from all sorts of great books.  The students had a great time marching around the school grounds, showing off our costumes and books to parents, grandparents, friends, and students from CES in the Book Character Parade.  Then, we did fun fall activities all day long.  We finished the day with our Fall Party!  We played several fun games - Monster Mash, the Gross Candy Grab, and Hot Pumpkin - and had a delicious snack, too!  What a fun day!

Click on the image below to watch a Smilebox slideshow of pictures from our Book Character Dress Up Day and Fall Party.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Writer's Workshop

One of the students' favorite subjects is Writer's Workshop.  We are Writer's Workshop stars!  Our class has been observed many times by everyone from Mr. Gordon and Ms. Nelson to Central Office staff, academic coaches from several schools, and even an America's Choice expert!  We've gotten lots of praise and positive feedback for the way we conduct our workshop.

Mrs. Jones is so proud of the class - and the students should be so proud of themselves - because carrying out the workshop model to this extent can be a challenge in Kindergarten, but our class rises to the occasion!  Our students can state the Georgia Performance Standard in their own words, identify the genre and purpose of their writing piece, and implement many effective writing strategies.  We're even creating our own assessment rubrics as a class - that's wonderful!

One of the best things about our workshop is our closing.  Each day, several students who did a great job of exemplifying the focus GPS element during worktime are chosen to share.  The rest of the students listen to the writing, and then they provide feedback.  The student-led feedback session includes many compliments for our chosen authors as well as next steps that they could work on the following day.  It is incredible to hear kindergartners giving each other's work such compliments and suggestions for improvement!

Here are some pictures from a recent share time in Writer's Workshop.  Janie is in the Share Chair, reading a selection from her personal realistic narrative.  She wrote about the time she and her sister got their portraits taken outside.

Here, Ethan reads the latest exciting installment from his fictional narrative, The Great Bear Chase!

 

 Finally, the students give Quinten feedback on his personal realistic narrative.  He wrote a suspenseful tale about a time when his little sister was being naughty!

We're kindergarten authors in Writer's Workshop!

Read for the Record Day

... and Mr. Saunders's birthday!

Today was Read for the Record Day. That means that, all across the country, schoolchildren would be listening to the same book being read aloud in hopes of breaking the world record.  This year, the book chosen was The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.  Our media specialist, Dr. Hart, had asked Mrs. Jones's husband - Mr. Saunders as the students call him - to come in and read to a few classes.  Of course, he read to us!

 

After he read the book aloud, the students hurried back to the classroom because we'd planned a little surprise party!  It just so happened that Read Across America Day fell on Mr. Saunders's 29th birthday.  So, Mrs. Jones and the students decided that a surprise party was in order, complete with cupcakes, balloons, and a festive crown for Mr. Saunders!  The kids were so excited and could not wait to scream, "Surprise!"

Mr. Saunders was very shocked by the celebration, and everyone had a great time at the little party.  Mr. Saunders was a very good sport and wore his crown the whole time!

Sizzie's birthday is October 9, so we celebrated her as well.  Here are both birthday guests of honor!

All the students loved reading their cards to Mr. Saunders and showing him their drawings.

It was a wonderful birthday celebration!