January 30-February 3

February is here! We have so many fun events to celebrate: the 100th day of being Kindergarteners, Valentine's Day, a school dance, Family Night! We are so excited! We will exchange valentine cards with the class!  Here is a list of student names if you'd like to get started early! More information about the 100th day celebration coming soon!


Upcoming events:
February 3: Dance
February 7: Half Day
February 9-10: Math Staff Developer visits!
February 23: Half Day
February 24: No School
February 27: Family Night: Music, Masterpieces and Munchies

Reading:  Although we have been doing a lot of work with decoding, it is important to work on comprehension skills too! This week, readers will work on making predictions about their books and retelling books with their partners. After reading a book at home, ask your reader:

• Who was in the story?
• Where was the story happening?
• What happened or what were the big events in the story? Remember to tell it in order! 

Writing:  This Friday will be our How-to unit celebration. We will review all the different parts of a How-to book using our whole-class book, How-to Make a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich.  We will edit our books and prepare to publish at the end of the week. We will test out our class how to book by making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as a snack!

Math: Here are the centers we will rotate through this week:

• In pairs, students will take turns to roll 2 dice and quickly cover one up with a cup. The challenge is for the second child to give the total. They can remove the cup to check and record.
• Students will toss red and yellow chips from a cup to a tray. They will look at the number of yellow and red tiles to record partner numbers. 
• Mathematicians will play memory with teen numbers and equations. 14 and 10+4 would be a match
• We will build teen numbers with unifix cubes and a teen number. 

Word Study:  Our new sight words are with, new, away, down, & do.

Social Studies: We will wrap up our family unit this week. Students will finish up work in the social studies centers and revise their family drawings from the beginning of the unit.

January 23-27

 We had a wonderful time celebrating our school last week! I feel proud and thankful that I have the opportunity to work with such great kids and their families. Thank you for all you do! 

Here is our decorated door from this week!

Upcoming events:
February 3: Dance
February 7: Half Day
February 9-10: Math Staff Developer visits!
February 24: No School
February 27: Family Night: Music, Masterpieces and Munchies

Reading:  The big reading work for Kindergarteners at this point in the year is to monitor the following as they read unknown words:

• Does it look right?
• Does it sound right?
• Does it make sense? 

If they answer no to one of those questions, they should go back to fix it up! As their books become less and less patterned, readers are urged to rely on searching the picture for meaning and using their knowledge of sight words and letter sounds. This is hard work! Remember to give your child lots of time to try it themselves and praise them for their attempts!

Writing:  This week we will learn that how to writers use precise vocabulary and clarify their directions by adding comparisons. They will guide their readers with warnings, tips, and suggestions. Many of the students have been writing books that they are planning to give to the 4K students! Their books teach different things about going to Kindergarten. How cool is it that even these young writers know how to write for a specific audience!?

Math: Students are exploring sorting, equal and not equal, addition, teen numbers, and shapes this week. Ask your child to sort things around the house with you and DESCRIBE the attributes of the objects. The math talk is the most important part of the activity!

• Students will use dice to compare numbers with equal and not equal signs. 
• Using a variety of math shapes, students will sort and ask partners to describe why the shapes are sorted that way. Then they will play, "What's Missing". Partners place objects on a grid. Partner 1 removes an object. Partner 2 guesses which object was missing using positional words. (i.e. The blue square below the orange triangle is missing.)
• Students will choose a domino and add the numbers they see. Students will practice writing the equation. 
• We will build teen numbers using tiles, five groups, and ten strips. Using the different types of number groups will help the students to group numbers when counting and visualizing. 

Word Study:  We will continue to work with the following sight words: he, she, did, help, & make.
We will also discuss long and short vowels. Typically, we focus on the short vowel sound, but as students are reading more and more, they will come across the long vowel sounds as well. The chart is a helpful visual!

Social Studies: We will have center rotations where students can explore families and create representations of their families. So far, the students have had meaningful conversations about how all families are different and what it means to be part of a family. Here are the centers:

• Students will use iPads to read about families using the Epic books app. 
• Students will looks at pictures of families. They will act out the scenarios thinking about what the people might be saying and how they are feeling. 
• Each student  will create a family books to teach others about his/her family
• Students will interview a partner by asking questions about who is in their family. They will create a glyph to represent who the people in their family are. 

January 16-20

It's celebrate New Directions week!

We have a lot to celebrate!! Working at a school with such supportive, friendly families is definitely something I celebrate. Thank you for all you do! 

**Remember that your child can bring one item in to share on their day! Check your email to see what day your child can bring something in.

Here is a quick peek at our learning this week:

Reading: As I have been assessing student reading, I am AMAZED at the growth I am seeing. If you haven't gotten one already, a Matching Books to Readers sheet will come home in your child's book bag. Refer to this sheet for tips and information about your child's current reading level. If you have any questions, please let me know! I'd be happy to explain what your child is working on specifically as a reader. 

Writing: We will study other How-To books to see how we can make ours even better! Students will learn to use the word ‘You’ when writing a book of directions. We will focus on choosing descriptive words and giving our readers warnings, suggestions, and tips just like in published How-To books.

Math: In math, we will be reviewing a few different math ideas through different activities and lessons. These include: 

• Number order
• Writing numbers
• Circling a ten group in a teen number 
• Naming the partners of a number and writing the equation to match
• Shape practice 
• +1 strategy for adding and -1 strategy for subtracting

Social Studies: We have launched our family unit and have had many great conversations about how everyone's family is different and special. We will be learning about different centers that students will rotate through next week that will showcase their family! 

Word Work: One way we work on sight words at school is to look, say, cover, write, then check the word. Try it out at home!  

January 9-13

Starting this week, students can bring one thing in to share from home during our Morning Meeting time! Check your email to see what day your child can bring something in to share.

Upcoming events:
January 16-20: Celebrate NDLC Week! See below for flyer! 
January 16: PJs and Stuffed Animal Day
January 16: Family Night-Art Night
January 17: Crazy Hair or Hat Day
January 18: No School
January 19: Sports Day and Family Gym Night
January 20: Half Day and Book Character Day

Reading:  As your child continues to get books with more unfamiliar words, they will need to rely heavily on their letter-sound knowledge. When a readers tells me "I don't know this word" I usually tell them to "Try a strategy". As they are working to figure out the word, I might coach them by saying "Check the picture" or "Use the first few letters". Once students make a guess at what the word is, I ask "Does it look like that word-check the letters at the beginning and end". This way, you are helping your child figure out how to decode rather than doing the work for them. Happy reading!

Writing:  As we continue to work with How To books, students will work with partners to act out the books to check if the directions/steps make sense. They will add labels to their pictures and diagrams. Finally, they will look at our charts to set goals to create the very best writing they can! For example, students may choose to focus on writing details about their topic. I am excited to see how the students set goals for themselves.

Math: We will work with teen numbers, adding and subtracting, and shapes.

• Students will use dice to race to be the first to make a teen number. They are encouraged to add numbers and group manipulatives in ten and five groups to see the numbers quickly.   
• Mathematicians will practice adding and subtracting fluently within five. They will use a five frame to help them solve and visualize the problems. 
• Students will use triangles, rectangles, squares, circles, and hexagons to create new shapes. A partner will try to create the same shape. Then, they will discuss the shapes’ attributes and how you can use familiar shapes to make a new shape. 
•  Mathematicians will dump of cup full of chips to find out what teen number is in the cup. Then, they will draw a picture of that teen number and fill in the blanks to tell how many 10s and 1s make up the teen number. 

Word Study:  Our sight words for the week are play, have, get, will, & for.

Social Studies : We are beginning a new unit studying families! We will begin this week exploring the question, “What is a family?” We will do this through a video aloud, read aloud, and class discussions. During a video aloud, students view a video without sound. During this time, they are watching carefully to try and interpret what they see. After discussion, we will listen to the audio and continue class discussion.

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January 3-6

Welcome back!
I hope everyone had a wonderful break. I can't wait to get started on all of our exciting new K learning!

There are pictures from Super Reader Day and Science Day on the last post if you didn't already see them.

Here is the January homework calendar.
Here is the lunch menu.

Upcoming events:
January 16-20: Celebrate NDLC Week!
January 16: PJs and Stuffed Animal Day
January 16: Family Night-Art Night
January 17: Crazy Hair or Hat Day
January 18: No School
January 19: Sports Day and Family Gym Night
January 20: Half Day and Book Character Day

What’s happening in Kindergarten this week?

Reading: Kindergarten readers are about to start growing bigger muscles to read bigger books! We will look closely at the patterns in our books and use those to help us solve tricky words. We will make sure we are understanding what we read by going back to check our reading and using the ending to understand our books. We will be reassessing your child's reading this week and so you may see some new colored dot coming home in book bags! You can help your child out by encouraging him/her to check the picture, use the beginning sound, and use sight words to help!

Writing:  We will be learning to write How To books during this unit. We will write a class book as a model in the beginning of the week. Students will begin writing their own books too! To help your child generate ideas to write about, talk through the steps of things your child does at home. For example, a bed time routine, cooking dinner, getting ready for school, etc.

Math: We will continue to work with teen numbers, partner numbers, and 10 groups.

• Students will make a teen numbers book that shows the teen number as 10+ some extras.  
• Mathematicians will use ten strips, number tiles, and other manipulatives to build teen numbers. It is important that the students see that every teen number has a ten "hidden" inside of it. 
• We will make break apart books where students will use dotters and strips to show the partners of the numbers 2-6. 
• We will practice adding and subtracting fluently within 5 using dominoes. Students will write the equations on whiteboards. 

Word Study:  Our new sight words for the week are play, have, get, will, & for.  I would encourage students to practice writing their sorts at home! Dry erase markers, with a spoon in the snow, or with paint and a Q-tip are fun ways to practice!

Social Studies : As we come back after a long break, we will use our social studies time slot as a time to ‘reboot’. We will go over what we can do to learn and play successfully in our classroom.