We love math! We spend the first 15-20 minutes of math counting to 100 and subitizing and talking whole group about our math concept for the day. We then break out in to partners and play a math game or do an activity to help learn the concept that we are learning. We sometimes do stations or rotate through activities and we frequently incorporate the arts in to our math games.
Word work is a great time for students to practice their sight words and practice making new words using the letters that they know. We use this time to practice sounding out words, a skill that we use all the time in reading and in writing . For word work we use all kinds of fun materials to practice our letters. We use whiteboards, letter blocks, puzzles, play doh, magnets, crayons, wiki sticks and many other things to help us practice forming our letters and making words.
Everyday we get 15 minutes of independent reading time to practice new reading strategies and just enjoy a good book! This time is important because it helps students become stronger readers and helps them to develop a love of reading. Every Monday we pick two good fit books from our classroom library that are on the correct reading level that we should be able to read well by the end of the week. We also pick one picture book that we think looks interesting. We use these picture books to practice reading pictures, finding words we know and to practice retelling a story.
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