I Want My Hat Back

The children have been busy preparing for our Reader's Theater for weeks. It has been a collaborative process involving an author study, voting for the book they would like to read, connecting our learning to our chosen text, integrating art and expression, and supporting all peers.

Throughout this experience I have been in awe of their patience and love for one another. They not only understand that each child in our classroom is working on something different - from pointing to words as they read to having a calm body during transitions - but they accept and honor the needs of one another and the needs of our classroom as a whole.

As a teacher I place a lot of value on community and peer support, but this particular group of children have encouraged me to reflect and better my own practice. They are the voice of our classroom. Their ownership of our classroom environment, learning, and work has been essential throughout our Kindergarten journey.

They truly are a community of avid readers.

Thank you families for supporting the children and for coming together to celebrate their growth as readers and their love for Jon Klassen!


Final preparations and thinking about how we're feeling leading up to their performance...

 

 

 

 

 

 


Reader's Theater
6 - 1 -18

 

 

 

 

 

 


Following the children's performance and our community breakfast, we reviewed the thoughts from our audience. After recording the information on a t-chart, we counted and compared. It was close, but more people in our audience thought that the bear sat on the rabbit!

 

reader's theater - practicing and preparing

On Tuesday the Kindergarteners began to practice for their reading of I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen. We talked about welcoming the audience, introducing the book, and sharing a little about Jon Klassen's writing. We discussed transitions and what the children know about transitions;

transitions should be...

mindful
organized
quiet and careful

Our focus throughout the week has not only been on the reading of the story, but in how the story is read. The children have practiced (and practiced) projecting their voices and reading with expression. While our discussions about Reader's Theater and the importance of practice have been serious, we have celebrated the children's growth! I am not surprised by their self-control and patience, by their engagement and involvement. They truly are a community of avid readers - supporting one another, reading with fluency and expression, and thinking deeply about Jon Klassen's work. It is a true pleasure to support them as they prepare for sharing their love for reading and community with their families on June 1st.

On Friday morning I invited students to 'unscramble' and build the first two sentences from our book;

My hat is gone.
I want it back.

Following the cutting, building, gluing and reading of the sentences, each child used sharpies and paint to represent the main character in the story - the bear. Look for pictures of their final pieces as well as additional Jon Klassen inspired art in the coming days!

 

In the below photographs, children work to build the first two sentences from I Want My Hat Back during Fundations, connecting our literacy work to our Reader's Theater preparations! Later in the morning they represent the main character, the bear. 

 

 

 

chick work

Having eggs in our classroom provided authentic learning experiences - from our predictions and developing theories about egg size to actual measurement data and graphing. On Tuesday we had 14 chicks hatched and investigated two math problems;

We started with 26 eggs at the beginning and 14 eggs have hatched. How many eggs didn't hatch?

14 chicks are in the bin. How can you show this?

With the eggs hatching throughout Monday and Tuesday, we incorporated more language and representation into our chick work. Through our morning message, I invited the children to describe a chick using ONE word. We reread our collection of words in the form of a poem on Friday and the children drew a picture of a chick to go with our poem.

During academic choice, one of our new choices was to observe one of the chicks in a small clear bin and carefully draw it - following choice Inez and Whitney shared their "scientific chick drawings" with their peers.

 

 

 

 

 

hatching

On Monday morning we had three chicks hatched in our incubator with the remainder following close behind. The children eagerly watched the incubator, waiting for the chicks to be dry enough to move to our bin. On Tuesday we began to take chicks out on our oval rug, placing them between two children for close observation.

We talked about the importance of calm bodies and quiet voices. Toby shared that the chicks don't have any "mothers" in our classroom - so we had to be careful and loving! Some of the most powerful moments were later in the week, when small groups of children would sit still with a chick and then pass the chick to a peer - the passing of a chick was a big responsibility and the gentle passes and small smiles made for a collection of beautiful moments.

By Friday our chicks were bopping around the bin, ready for more space and less interested in the warmth of a child's palm. It was a little more challenging to hold the fluffy chicks, so during morning meeting we held a couple of chicks for the last time, before saying goodbye at the end of the day!