Posting Learning Objectives/Chubby Little Snowman

Does your district require that you post learning objectives in your classroom? Very often I've seen a single piece of paper hung on the wall nearest the door or first marker board, with phrases such as "Learner will create and extend AB, ABC, and ABB patterns," printed out single-spaced, in a font size that not many students will be able to see, because really, they're not the ones who require the objectives to be posted in the first place.

Instead of merely complying with an administrative mandate, why not use the objectives as goals or focus points accessible by your students?

While many of my students aren't able to read our weekly goal chart at the beginning of the year, here at the midpoint quite a few of them can read the sight words, enjoy sounding out the new vocabulary, and ask me at the beginning of each week "What are we going to learn this week Mrs. Sommerville?"



I've turned our objectives into "we" statements (which students regularly use as "I" statements- talk about empowering!), such as "We will learn facts about Kansas" or "We will identify solid shapes: sphere, cube, pyramid, cylinder, rectangular prism, cone." " We will use number lines and count past 30" garnered lots of oohs-aahs and "COOL's!" Now it's not just me, my aide, my principal, and any other classroom visitor who will know what we're doing in kindergarten during any given week- my students are in on the plan, exactly as they should be!

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Here's a peek at our writing center:



Full of paper, stencils, colored pencils, and word books:



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January is the perfect time to make snowmen! If Mother Nature doesn't deliver snow, paint the cool characters instead:





One of our classroom poems this month is The Chubby Little Snowman:

A chubby little snowman

had a carrot nose.

Along came a bunny,

and what do you suppose?

That hungry little bunny

thought he found his lunch,

and down came the carrot,

nibble, nibble, CRUNCH!

For a hallway display (photo tomorrow), I've modified the poem to read:

Each chubby little snowman

has a carrot nose.

Along comes a bunny,

and what do you suppose?

This hungry little bunny

thinks he's found his lunch,

so down comes the carrot,

nibble, nibble, CRUNCH!

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