Five for Friday – November 13

Hi! It’s Friday, and I have a few minutes to myself, so I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for my favourite, Five for Friday! Five for Friday is a linky party where teachers post about five random things from their week.

We had a GREAT week this week. Having Wednesday off probably helped a bit (we didn’t have our usual Friday fatigue today), and my class is in that sweet spot of just being all around lovely, engaged, excited, and pretty well-behaved. I am feeling so excited about teaching, and so pleased with some of the things we have been accomplishing lately!

My happiness began this week when Ben, my favourite human, finally caved and decided to give making clip art a try! He is SO SO talented, and I have been trying to convince him for ages to give it a go. How amazing would it be to have my own, personal clip artist in the house? ;)

He is starting out with some superheroes. Aren’t they adorable?!

I just can’t wait to see them when they are all cleaned up and coloured!!

I don’t know if it is a Kindergarten teacher thing, but I love colouring and find it super relaxing. I am so excited that adult colouring books are a thing now and I really hope that Santa brings me one this year! In the meantime, I have been enjoying colouring these FREE tribal adult colouring sheets from Rebecca B Designs. I posted about them on my Facebook page, but in case you missed it, here is the link to them in her TPT store!

I just knew that Costco Sharpie pack would come in handy someday ;)

Yesterday, I only had 13 kids! I finished my report cards on Wednesday, so I was all set to dive into some new content after spending basically all of Monday and Tuesday squeezing in last-minute evaluations and tying up loose ends. But since I was missing so many, I changed my plans a bit. One of the outcomes we are working on this term is showing our understanding of a text through different means (like a drawing, retelling, skit, etc.). Some of my kiddos are still not solid in their second language, so comprehension is really important. Thinking about the characters, setting, and key details are essential to being able to retell a story, and if a student can identify and discuss all of those things, to me, they definitely understand what I read to them. To introduce them to this idea, I started with something every already knew – the Three Little Pigs. We read the book, then made some adorable puppets. They had to show me that they knew who the main characters were, and aside from a quick discussion, I gave very little guidance here. I showed them how to make a pig, and that was it – the rest was all them (I noted if they recognized they needed 3 pigs and a wolf to retell the story). I seriously did zero prep for this. It was totally on the fly when it was 8:40am, the busses had been and gone, and I realized no more kids were coming. I literally put pink, red, and black paper and googly eyes on their tables and modelled how they could find two different sized circles around the classroom (pencil holders, tape rolls, containers, etc.) to trace for a head and nose. No templates! I also showed them they could cut the corners of the paper to make triangle ears. Look how adorable they turned out!

The wolves they totally free-handed. The one above is a really bad wolf – look at those red eyes, haha! The sticks were a combination of left over stick thingys from when we grew beans last year, straws, and white coloured pencils (because who uses those anyway?!).

Then I gave them straws, wooden blocks, and Lego to make houses out of straw, wood, and bricks, and we “played” the Three Little Pigs. It was so much fun!! And so easy for me to see that everyone understood the main ideas of the story. Even though this is a story that probably everyone knew before they got to school, it is still great practice for later in the year when we get into some new stories! I was also SO PLEASED with how much French was being spoken! Usually it is hard to get them to speak French while playing – they don’t have all of the vocabulary yet. But, since we had just read the story, they were using a lot of words that they had heard over and over in the book. “Petit cochon, petit cochon, laissez-moi entrer!” “Je vais SOUFFLER et SOUFFLER!” Love it!

Two wolves huffing and puffing!

Straw houses are actually really tricky to build

In the afternoon, we talked about how the wolf seemed mean and like he wanted to eat the pigs. But then I asked if they thought it was possible the wolf was just misunderstood… and we read one of my favourite versions of les Trois petits cochons :

This story is so cute! The wolf is actually sick and just wants some tissues… but the pigs won’t share. So he gets frustrated, goes down the chimney, lands in a “warm bath”, and ends up sneezing all over the pigs and sharing his germs! It’s so important to cover your mouth when you sneeze ;)

After we read that story, we played again for about 15 minutes, and added some Kleenex into the game. They could decide if their wolf was mean or just sick.

I loved this activity and can’t wait to build their French vocab and comprehension skills in the same way with more stories this year!

Our guided reading lessons have also been going strong. We started serious guided reading this week. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this small group time!! It took us a really long time this year to get into the groove of our centres. I have another blog post coming up about how centre time looks in my classroom – it didn’t always run smoothly, haha. But now we are pros and I am getting that quality time I need with my groups. Today we busted out my special magnet counters/magic wands and our Lentement comme un serpent mats for the first time and had a blast segmenting and blending sounds!

rrrrrr…..aaaaaah….rat!

I have been working really hard compiling all of my guided reading stuff into one big document for TPT. I am on page 75 or something like that and still have lots of activities to add! These snake mats and segmenting cards will be in there, along with all of the other things I do to teach reading strategies to my kinders. So if you are looking for help making your guided reading time run smoothly and efficiently, check back soon! :)

Number 5 was a big proud teacher moment for me today!!! On of my little munchkins successfully read his yellow sight words and fluency sentences perfectly! That means he already knows 30+ sight words and it is only November *all of the heart eyes*! I am LOVING my sight word lists more than ever this year. It’s the first time I started early in the year, and I am seeing big progress for a lot of my kiddos. I love how it is differentiated depending on each student, and moves along at their own speed. As a class, whole-group, I have taught all of the red words and our first two orange. But, some of my kids still haven’t mastered their red words yet – that’s fine! They get to practice at home at their own speed and once they get them, they will get their orange list. I have three kids who got their orange lists today, and four who got their yellows. That’s half my class who is ahead of the game – I love that they can progress at their own rate!

If you aren’t sure what these lists are and are interested in a new way of practicing sight words with your students, you can check this product out in my TPT store by clicking HERE. Basically, I took 90 high-frequency words, broke them into groups of 10, and gave each group a colour. Students start with red, and when they master a list, they move onto the next colour, all at their own pace. There are certificates and progress reports/evaluations for each list, and fluency sentences that practice all 10 words from the list in context, and include words from previous lists as well, so they aren’t forgotten. If your kids master all their lists, there is another product for practicing les sons composés, which you can check out HERE, or you can buy the bundle with both products HERE and save $$.

I hope you have the very best weekend! :)

PS – Are you a member of my FREE French Resource Library yet?? If not, just enter your name & email below and hit the button. I’ll send you the exclusive password and instructions for getting your hands on every freebie I have ever made – and will ever make!