For independent writing, the class has been making their own little books with pattern sentences. We started off with everyone making books about the classroom, using the sentence starter, "I see the ..." We brainstormed ideas and then the children used their kindergarten spelling to fill in the blanks. Next we moved to sentences about the playground, "I like the ..." Later the children selected their own topics. These varied from Halloween, birthdays, princesses, gardens, foods, toys, etc. The children were taught to stretch out their words for spelling phonetically, use spaces between their words, writing small and neatly, and adding details to their pictures. We also talked about using a variety of other sentence patterns, such as, "Here is the ...," "Look at the ...," Come see the ...," "This is a ...," etc. These sentence starters helped to introduce and reinforce sight vocabulary.
As part of Poetry in the Park, we will we reading and writing poems over the next several weeks. Each child will begin a book of poems. As a class we will read a poem on a chart together several times. Then the children will be given small copies of the poem to glue and illustrate in their poetry books. We will practice reading these poems throughout the rest of the year, adding new poems each week. Our focus will be poems between now and Thanksgiving, but we will continue to read and write poems all year.
The poems we will be writing will revolve around familiar topics, such as, colors happiness, friends, myself, and using our five senses. Here is an example:
Happiness sounds like ...
Happiness looks like ...
Happiness smells like ...
Happiness tastes like...
Happiness feels like ...
We will first brainstorm as a class lots of ideas for each one. Then each child will select an idea that he or she like and record it on their poetry papers. Each of their poems will be illustrated and later compiled into booklets for their Bag of Books.
November will be a busy month of learning for all of us!
