Week by Week Series - Week 8

Sometimes with new skills, repetition is key. Once again we focused on alphabetical order with the kinder and first grade classes. My story this week was L is for Library, another alphabet book.

With my very littles, the kiddos in our two-year kindergarten program, I had them put alphabet cards in order by themselves. Up until this week we have been doing together as a class. I was pleasantly surprised, they were each able to complete the task.

With my regular kinders, I stepped it up a notch this week – I divided them into groups of 6-7 and gave them a stack of my E books, which, as I mentioned last week, are labeled with a bright yellow single author letter. My aide and I helped as needed but the kids really didn’t need much help. With both sets of kinders, I had a coloring page L is for Library, which is available free in my TeachersPayTeachers store.

With the first graders, we did the same thing as last week (and the same thing as the kinders) in groups of 3 or 4. When they finished, and we had checked their work, the students had to place all of the books back on the shelves. We still need to work on the fact that you won’t find the “T” books if you are standing by the “A” books. We also need to do a little work on correct placement on the shelves (spine out, yellow letter right side up, etc.) but they are gradually learning.

With the second grade I did the same type of activity as last week but again pushed it up a level. Last week we used E cards; this week we used F cards. That meant that they had to match the first three author letters, and there were more than one care with some of the initial letter the same. The students were able to complete the first part of the activity (the matching) with little difficulty. The hard part for them came when they had to put the cards in shelf order. They had a hard time with the duplicate first letters with differences in the second and third letters – they struggled with putting these in the correct order.

The Digital Citizenship lessons are drawing to a close. The third and fourth graders finished the assignments started last time. In fifth, we completed the last lesson of the unit. We looked at stereotypes and how some products are marketed specifically to one gender or the other. As part of the assignment they had to look at two different web sites – I purposely assigned more boys to the “girl” web site and more girls to the “boys” web site. The reactions were interesting.

In Week 7 we wrapped up reading the Bats article in the World Book Encyclopedia Online. The week, we had a stack of books scattered around the room. Most of the books were specifically about bats. Others were about animals in general and the students had to use the index to find the information about bats. You can find the books we used listed below in my Amazon Affiliate links. The teacher divided the class into pairs. We reviewed how to do the bibliography cards for books and then turned the students loose to work on their note taking. About halfway through the period, the teacher looked at me and said, “This is the way it is supposed to be.” They were almost all on task and writing their note cards. We have reached the stage where they get it. The rest of the year will be so much easier because of this. This teacher does a lot of research with her students and now they know how.