CVC Puzzles Short Vowel O

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  3 Types of readers in children Whether you are a parent or teacher, working with children and helping them learn to read is rewarding. I had the opportunity to teach 6 year olds this past year and I have observed that there are three types of students: strong readers, emerging readers and weak readers. Strong readers  have good phonemic awareness and are excellent decoders. (Please refer to my introduction to phonemic awareness and decoding words) Emerging readers  are on the way and are expanding their knowledge of phonics sounds and applying it to decode familiar and unfamiliar words. Weak readers  need frequent prompts for segmenting and blending the sounds together. In severe cases, they may even struggle to remember letters and consonant sounds. HOW DOES THE BRAIN PROCESS WORDS? ·           Through Phonological awareness (i.e learning the sounds of words) and orthography (spelling of words). Skilled readers were abl...
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Pressed Flowers Bookmark

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My kindergarten uses the inquiry approach to teach children. This means that we have a transdisciplinary theme which is currently "Sharing the planet". More specifically, an inquiry into the rights and responsibilities in the struggle to share finite resources with other people and other living things.


The subtheme to this is our Central Idea (CI) which is "Plants sustain life and play an important role in our lives".

We also have Lines Of Inquiry (LOI) which acts as a guide as to where our inquiry should head toward.
1. Plant parts and their function
2. The importance of plants to humans and the environment
3. Our responsibility toward our environment

We used Kath Murdoch's inquiry cycle approach that has six stages.
1. Tuning in: At this stage, we do a provocation to find out what prior knowledge do the children (my class of 5 yo) have about this topic on plants.

Provocation can be in the form of using related newspaper articles, storybooks, videos whatever you prefer.

Personally, I like to write to parents and let them know what the current inquiry is about and suggest to them home-activities that support their child's learning. The objective of this is to give parents time to prepare their child for Show & Tell in the homeroom. This is flexible and not compulsory.

Some home activities I suggested were:
1. Visit the library to read up on plant-related books. Let your child choose the book they are interested in.
2. Visit places of interest (i.e Botanic Gardens, Gardens by the Bay, local parks, plant nurseries)
3. Do gardening with your child
4. Collect/bring plant samples to class

Children (5 yo) were encouraged to say a few facts about the item during Show & Tell.

The inquiry approach also uses 5 Approaches to Learning (ATL). These help the child to develop skills like:
1. Communication
2. Thinking
3. Social
4. Self-management & physical motor
5. Research

Learning should be packed with activities too. As a Chinese proverb quote, "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."

So today I am going to let you in on one activity that we did in the homeroom (aka classroom).







PRESSED FLOWERS BOOKMARK

I tried pressing my own flowers but the effect was not as nice as store-bought ones. So I decided to go with the latter.

Materials:
Bookmark template
Art paper
Pressed flowers
White glue
Cotton bud

Steps:
1) Print the bookmark template onto art paper. Cut out.
2) Use a cotton bud to dab white glue onto the petals.
3) Be very gentle.
4) Stick the pressed flowers and leaves onto the paper.
5) Leave to dry and then laminate.


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