Mrs. Johnson's Kindergarten: We Are Readers and Writers!

We have been so busy in Room 8 over the last several weeks! Many exciting things have been happening, but perhaps the most exciting thing of all is that we are become READERS and WRITERS! We have been working up until now, building the foundation of skills needed to read and write, and all of the pieces are beginning to come together! It is an amazing process to watch and be a part of!

During Reader's Workshop, we have talked all year long about "what good readers do." Good readers take care of books, tell stories from the pictures and words in books, use stories they are familiar with to retell stories, and talk with others about things they are reading. We have practiced and practiced and practiced these different reading habits. These habits, along with our hard work with phonics (letters and sounds), will all help us as we embark on the exciting journey of learning to read emergent and "just right" books. Most of the work of learning to read will take place in first grade, but kindergarten is where children learn the basic skills of decoding words, using pictures to help them read, matching voice to print as they read, and using sight words in their reading. Just this past week, we all were given our special "Book Baggies" to be used during Reader's Workshop. These bags contain sight word books we have read and we "went shopping" for just right books to add to them. These just right books are very early readers with predictable, patterned text. Children will practice reading these books over and over again, both with a teacher and independently. Each week we will choose different books to add to these book baggies. Sometimes, books will come home for additional practice. The children are so excited to be "reading" and some of them even take their book baggies out to read during free choice time! Enjoy these pictures of our first few days with our book baggies!

Kaleb practices finger-pointing as he reads.

Olivia points as she reads a sight word book.

Evan reads Goodnight, Gorilla from his book baggie.

We have been just as busy during Writer's Workshop. Over the past couple of weeks, we each chose a piece of writing from our writing folder that we wanted to "publish" (which we learned meant to edit and make fancy for others to read, just like what real authors do with their books!) Children spent time rereading their writing and making sure their words made sense and their pictures had enough detail. On Thursday, we had an Author's Celebration! We each read our piece we chose to publish and we enjoyed M&M cookies to celebrate all of our hard work!