using all of our reading powers!

The children have been reading more challenging books. When a super reader adds a new and challenging book to their library, they have to study their books, noticing what is the same and what is different. We noticed that all of our challenging books have more words on every page; we have to be ready with sound power and sight word power. We noticed more characters in our challenging books and noticed the characters talking!

To help warm up our reading powers, the children organized their books and tools from their reading basket. They put their most challenging book on the bottom and then their least challenging book on top. They read through their stack and then read it back. 

Make a stack and read it back!

We used pattern power to look for repeating words within the sentences of our more challenging books, because we can use pattern power to read almost every page! We then made our own patterned book with the new sight word am. The children used Sidney's I am Playing book as an example.

We noticed that Sidney tried to stop us by changing the pattern on the last page of her book, but we are Super Readers and brought our sight word power and picture power to help figure out the break in the pattern!

I am Playing

We connected our work with am to our work building words during Fundations. The children built three-phoneme words in the am family; Sam, pam, ram, yam...

They worked on their own Am Word Family Book on Friday. 

Am Words!

am word building

Nora used sight word power to build am (and many other sight words) during academic choice!

button problems

This week we had two new kinds of story problems using combinations of 5. We have worked with five in many different ways, showing combinations using five frames, numbers, pictures, and number trees! 

We have been solving addition story problems showing how many in all, but this week we needed to solve for what was missing in the combination. 

Jill is wearing a new vest, too!
It has 5 buttons on it. 2 of the buttons are red.
The rest of the buttons are blue.
How many buttons are blue?

Presenting a familiar number combination through a different kind of story problem provided a challenge and many powerful mistakes! We talked about how we were solving for the missing part in the story, not for how many in all.

We noticed that we were able to show the combination using pictures or equations, but worked together to think about what we were solving for; how many blue buttons!

We connected showing number combinations in different ways to our morning message on Thursday. With a button drawing on the message, children were invited to show it with a five frame and then with a number tree. 

The mathematicians brought a similar problem home to solve on Wednesday. 

The children also had an optional challenge on Wednesday. They were invited to use their red and blue tiles and five frames to show all of the combinations of five they could make.

Below is a picture of Sam's work from home. She took on our math challenge and was so persistent! She used five frames and equations to show her different combinations of five and then circled each combination after she counted it, ensuring her counting was organized. She was able to figure out that you can make six different combinations of five- counting my example!

I've included two pictures Kindergarteners giving the math challenge a try and providing powerful work. 

We solved the math challenge together on Friday morning during our meeting, with Lily helping us by sharing her work from home. We figured out that you can make 6 different combinations using red and blue tiles and a five frame!

animals under the snow

We read another nonfiction (teaching) book about animals in winter; Under the Snow. Last week the writers used pictures and words to show an active animal over the snow. On Friday, they used pictures and words to show an animal under the snow. 

In their Science Journals the children used detail and labels to show one animal. They were expected to use sound power, books, or the classroom to add two labels to their drawing, with some children adding even more labels!

In this small collection you can see a mouse, ladybugs, a vol, newts, fish, a bee, a bunny and a snake! Most of these animals were in the teaching book we read on Friday and some of these animals were in the first book we read, Over and Under the Snow.