Pictures from Room 82

100th day of school fun! 

100 days smarter! 

Here is some of the AMAZING writing about reading these Kindergarteners are capable of! 

Working with partners is fun! 

Career Day! 

We had cheerleaders, dentists, policemen, superheros, pilots, teachers and more! 

                                     

                                   

                               

                                 

Busy writers!

February 27-March 3

I am so excited to be back to see the students and jump back into our learning this week! Just a reminder to turn in field trip and conference forms if you have not done so already. Check out the last blog post for pictures from the last couple of weeks!

Upcoming events:

February 27: Family Night 5:30-7:00
March 2: Dr. Suess Character Dress Up Day
March 7: Paper Discovery Field Trip
March 10: Author's Breakfast 7:15-7:45 am
March 28 and 30: Parent Teacher Conferences

Reading:  We have been working hard to learn from the words, from the pictures, and from our conversations with partners to figure out exactly what the author has been teaching us in our books. Now, readers will ask themselves, "How does this information fit together?" and "What is this book mostly about?"  This work will set students up to understand and remember information more easily. Synthesizing and summarizing topics and main ideas will help them grow as readers!

Writing:   As we are nearing the end of our All About writing unit. the writers will be focusing on editing. We will check over our work to make sure we:

• used lowercase letters in the middle of our sentences
• used uppercase letters at the beginning of the sentence
• have word wall words spelled correctly 
• have punctuation in our books 
• included an introduction and conclusion 

Math: Mathematicians will begin to explore 3D shapes. We will talk about cylinders, cones, and cubes. We will work on solving story problems by acting them out, drawing pictures, restating the story problem, and writing the equations to match. Using all of these strategies to solve story problems helps students to develop a conceptual understanding of the math they are doing. Another way students build a conceptual understanding through pictures is by using math mountains. Math mountains are used to show the partners of a number. They look like this:

Word Study:   Our new words this week will be:  on, up, this are, & an.

Science: Scientists will continue their experiments with paper. We will test to see what happens when we put water on different kinds of paper. Students will use materials to make recyled paper AND even make their own paper mache bowls. It will be a messy and fun week for our scientists:)

February 20-23

Hello K families! I wanted to give you a head's up that I will not be at school next week Monday-Thursday. I have the opportunity to receive training in New York; I look forward to bringing my new knowledge back to use in the classroom!  Mrs. Flanagan will be our guest teacher all week. The students have had Mrs. Flanagan as a guest teacher once before and in 4K-so she will be a familiar face:) Mrs. Flanagan and I have worked together to go over the plans and routines so that the students will keep learning in a comfortable and familiar way!  I can be reached by email while I am out, but please feel free to call the office if there are things that need to be communicated quickly (ie. drop off/pick up changes)

Upcoming events:

February 22: Career Day-choose an outfit that shows what you would like to be when you grow up!
 February 23: Half Day

February 24: No School

February 27: Family Night: Music, Masterpieces and Munchies

• We will be collecting items for birthday boxes in the lobby during family night! Some ideas for items are: cake mixes, frosting, candles, hats, balloons, decorations, napkins, plates, etc. 

March 7: Field trip to the Paper Discovery Center-the permission slip should be returned by March 3rd. 

Reading:  Sometimes, these nonfiction books have words that these young readers have never seen before! This week, they will learn to how to figure out new expert words (vocabulary words) by looking at the picture and reading the page while thinking "What could this word mean?" Once they figure out what the word means, they can teach that word to other students in our class; just like a teacher would! Readers will wrap up the week by "bringing books to life" by acting them out. I have a feeling there will be lots of animals in the room on Thursday! 

Writing:   Students are taking some of the text features that they see in their nonfiction reading books and are trying to apply it to their writing. For example, after learning about new expert words in reading, they are encouraged to add an expert word to their All About book. This strong reading-writing connections really solidifies ideas for Kindergartners! Students will also learn that information writing can include many facts as well as the opinion of the author. 

Math:  Students will play math games, participate in whole class discussions and explore the following big ideas: 

• Mathematicians can tell adding and subtracting story problems using pictures
• Discovering partners of 10
• Teen numbers are a group of 10 and extras; students will look for patterns when building teen numbers

Word Study:  Our sight words are jump, funny, go, find, & not.

Science: We shift our focus to paper this week. We will explore different kinds of paper. Scientists will test the effects of water on different paper products. We will conduct experiments to answer these questions:

• What paper is easiest to write on?
• What paper is hardest to write on? 
• What paper absorbs the most water?
• What are the different kinds of paper used for? 

February 13-17

What an exciting start to the week!

Monday is the 100th day of school: Please remember to send in 100 snack items for our mix (For example, you could count out 100 goldfish). We will celebrate with 100 day activities in the afternoon!

Tuesday is Valentine's Day:  We will exchange valentine cards with the class!  Here is a list of student names. Contrary to the note I sent home, students CAN write their friends' names on the cards if you would like!

Upcoming events:

February 23: Half Day

February 24: No School

February 27: Family Night: Music, Masterpieces and Munchies
March 7: Field trip to the Paper Discovery Center-the permission slip will be sent home soon

Reading:  The nonfiction books have been a huge hit in our room! It's so fun to listen to the students ask questions and share knowledge about the topics they are reading about. This week, we will take that work a step further by asking readers to name the main topic of their book and then say some key details they learned while reading. Readers don't just say what they learned, they can point to where they learned that in the book-we call that text evidence. It is amazing to hear these young learners using this academic language! 

Writing:   Our focus this week is to elaborate in our all about books. Writers are working hard to add more than one sentence to a page, add examples, and choose descriptive words to teach more about their topics. Toward the end of the week, we will study another author's all about book to see what else we could add to our books. Writers might add bold words, diagrams, sidebars, definitions and more! Our nonfiction reading unit and all about writing unit provides a strong connection across the curriculum. 

Math: After meeting with our math staff developer, I am anxious to work some of his ideas and suggestions into our workshop. We will be focusing on three main concepts to review before our Unit 3 test on Friday. Students will play math games, participate in whole class discussions and explore the following big ideas: 

• Partners are made of part-part-whole
• Teen numbers are a group of ten and extras
• 5 groups help us organize to see number quickly  

Word Study:  Our sight words are jump, funny, go, find, & not. We have been working really hard to make sure we are using uppercase and lowercase letters in the correct places in our writing. Whenever you are writing at home, encourage lowercase letters unless it the is beginning of a sentence or a name!

Science: These Kindergarten scientists are getting really good at writing/drawing the scientific method in their science notebooks. For each experiment, they ask a question, make a hypothesis, plan an experiment, and come to a conclusion. We will continue to use this process as we study paper. 

February 6-10

Hello K families! I wanted to let you know that there will be a guest teacher in our room on Thursday. Our math staff developer, Ryan Flessner of Bulter University, will be providing professional development for teachers that afternoon. I look forward to bringing the knowledge he shares into our classroom.

Upcoming events:
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:  Our focus in reading switches to nonfiction books this week! We will get our library ready by sorting the books into fiction and nonfiction bins. Students will also find topic bins that hold books on animals, places, etc. When your child brings his/her book bag home this week, you will find books from their dot level as well as topic books that may or may not be at their individualized reading level. As you read any of these with your child, encourage him/her to  look closely at the pages, point to pictures to find even more, ask questions, and talk about books to become experts on their topics. These are high interest books for the kids--I am so excited to see how they work with them!

Writing:   This week we are starting to write All About books. The goal is for students to write an entire book that teaches about one topic. Students will begin to keep a ‘tiny topics’ notebook where they can jot down ideas about topics they want to write about. We will discuss thinking about and planning out how we can teach our readers the important facts about our topics. Writers will learn that they can plan out books using their fingers to keep track of their ideas. Help your writer think of different things he/she could teach others about! What is your child an expert on?

Math: The big ideas in math continue to be teen numbers, adding/subtracting, and shapes.
Here are the centers we will rotate through this week:

• Students will use a Math Expressions activity page to practice shape recognition and position words.  
• We will build teen numbers with real objects. 
• Students will play go fish with teen number cards (14 and 10+4 would be a match). 
• Students will challenge each other’s’ adding and subtracting skills by showing a partner a number of chips. Then, they will cover some of the chips with a cup. The partner will need to look at the pieces remaining to determine the number of chips under the cup. This is a great way to practice number sequencing and number sense!  

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

Science: Back to science this week and the students are so excited! We are going to be studying wood and paper. Students will explore different types of wood and study how it feels, looks, smells, etc. Then, we will test whether wood will float or sink. These hands on activities are great for working in teams, making hypotheses, conducting experiments, and discussing ideas. Stay tuned for more information in upcoming field trip to the Paper Discovery center in Appleton.

We had a blast making peanut butter and jelly for our writing celebration! Writing how to books was hard work, these Kindergarteners deserved a treat!