What’s Fun Friday?
All week long we are diligent with our routines I squeeze every productive minute of the instructional day and by Friday we are tired. Sometimes we are tired by Wednesday, ha! Knowing the transition from a play-based Kindergarten to Grade One can be a difficult I began to incorporate what others have told me to be a Proven Theory, Fun Fridays! The kids usually think I am rewarding in a big way. I have several blocks where I can get a lot of formal assessment done with the kids by having the time to work one to one.
Let’s take a look a a typical Fun Friday.
We try to make it a Pyjama day, just seemed like the right thing to do. The students earn stars all week so that we earn the pj’s. You can check out more about this in my previous post, “Whole Class Rewards Systems, will Save your life”. I will link it below for you. Our normal math routine changes to a Number Talk and a Number song and then they get centre time for the remainder of the period while I meet with students. My centre’s consist of open math bins, Duplo, Stem bins and a grocery store. I teach them how to use them and I also train them about noise levels. Recently I stumbled across bouncing balls it helps the students remember voice level by shushing them with fun colourful bouncing balls, if it gets above a certain level and it’s been working very well. I will link it below for you.
So that’s Math. What’s next for Proven Theory, Fun Friday?
Next up is our UFLI block I just keep this one the same. After Lunch, Proven Theory, Fun Fridays continues we do our regular independent reading, friend reading, and then a read aloud. Then they use word work centers of their choice while I again meet with students at my horseshoe table. My literacy centers consist of some games I have purchased over the last few years that target decoding skills and sight words the combination is working well at keeping their interest during this twenty-minute block. I rotate groups to teach them each station and then I allow individual choice with four children per center. After centers we head over to the Learning Commons to meet our Grade 6/7 friends for reading buddies. We finish the block there until recess and journal write.
Finally we end our Proven Theory, Fun Friday a few different ways depending on the weather.
Sometimes we end our day by going for a neighbourhood walk to look at community features. Other times we go outside and look for signs of changing seasons, or common critters for our area then talk about living and non living things. The possibilities are endless outside. My favourite activity is to go outside and draw what we see. I realized sometimes the structured learning can be too much by the end of their week and it needs to be shifted to more student-led learning. I try to incorporate this into our every day but really focus on it during Fun Friday’s. With lots of reflection, and working this into my practice I would say this Proven Theory for Fun Friday’s is correct. Give it a try, you won’t regret it.
With Love, C.
