Kindergarten leading the way in learning

Wow! Wow! Wow is all I have to say right now.  I meant to share this with you over the weekend, but here it is Wednesday as I sit down to write my thoughts down about my time in Kindergarten on Friday afternoon.  I was able to "teach" down in Ms. Garris's Kindergarten classroom and I had the time of my life!  Our kindergarten students are amazing and I wanted to take a moment to share their work in the learning and teaching process with you.  The objective for the lesson was retelling a story to include the correct sequence, characters and setting.  Students were able to verbally communicate the story elements and did so with excitement as they shared knee to knee, elbow to elbow with a partner.  Additionally, students moved into a writing piece which asked them to express their opinion!  Have you talked with a 5 or 6 year old lately?  Well, let me tell you that they have an opinion and want to tell you all about what they like or don't like! The Common Core curriculum asks that the kindergartener not only share their opinion, but then justify or support their opinion.  The students in Ms. Garris's class wrote about whether or not they likes cats or dogs and then were able to brainstorm and write one to five reasons to support their opinion.  Every child was communicating in written form following a conventions rubric (first word in a sentence starts with a capital letter, punctuation at the end of the sentence, spacing in between each word) independently!  To top it all off students were drawing a picture to support thier writing.  Many students added details to their pictures to support their opinion, i.e. I like dogs be coz they like to fech.  (then a dog with a ball). Congratulations to all of the students in Ms. Garris's class for the wonderful learning and progress they have made this year so far! (A picture to be added soon.)