Mapping Our Thinking

    This year, we have introduced different thinking maps into our classrooms at Goodrich. In kindergarten, we have been using circle maps to organize our thoughts and generate ideas to help deepen our thinking and understanding. Although we don't know how to spell all of the words that we talk about yet, the students have been proactive in sounding out words and even drawing pictures to correspond with our ideas to show what they know.  

    Below are some examples of student work where you can see the words they were able to write on their boards and pictures they have drawn to represent the words. We use the circle maps a lot in phonics in order to develop awareness of sounds in the things that are around us. In one example below, our focus letter was H and in the second, our focus letter was E. The students were able to see where the sounds fall better with our circle maps and were able to tell if it was a initial or medial sound for a word which is something that we will be focusing on later in the year. 

    We are excited to see our students show their thinking through these maps and look forward to seeing how they can use this tool to grow their knowledge throughout the year.