April 3-7

Please remember to send a lunch for your child on Friday if you did not preorder a school lunch!

Here is the April newsletter.
Here is the lunch menu.

Upcoming events:
April 3: Sports Day
April 7: Knowledge-a-thon in the the AM
April 7: PAC field  trip in the PM
April 11: Egg Crack Off and Class Color Day
April 12-17: NO SCHOOL
April 21: Wear Green and Blue for Earth Day
April 28: Funky Friday (dress as silly as you want)

Reading:  Readers will explore poetry this week! Reading familiar poems and songs helps students to build fluency and expression while reading. We will talk about the rhythm and phrasing while reading familiar poems. Students will also add more poems to their poem binders to prepare for our celebration at the end of the week.

Writing:  As our persuasive writers continue to try to solve problems, they will be thinking about teaching information to persuade and writing how-to books to explain how to make a change. We will continue to make sure each writer is including a problem, reasons why it is a problem, and a fix it idea. Later, we will work with our partners to edit for punctuation and practice reading our work before we share with others.

Math: We will be reviewing different topics we've covered during unit 4 in order to prepare for our test at the end of the week. We will focus on looking closely at pictures to find partners, solving and building teen number equations, and identifying and describing different shapes and their positions. 

Word Study: We will learn about onset and rime in different words. An onset is the beginning sound in a word (c in cat) and the rime is the ending which is usually a vowel and consonants (at in cat). Understanding onset/rime helps children learn about word families, which can build an understanding for future spelling strategies.

Social Studies: As a culminating activity for our self study, students will create a page to put in our classroom "yellow book". This page tells about what each student can do and likes, much like how the yellow pages in a phone book help you find experts on certain things. 

March 27-31

Please see your email as a reminder of your conference time. I look forward to meeting with you!

Upcoming events:
April 3: Sports Day
April 7: Knowledge-a-thon in the the AM
April 7: PAC field  trip in the PM
April 11: Egg Crack Off and Class Color Day
April 12-17: NO SCHOOL
April 21: Wear Green and Blue for Earth Day
April 28: Funky Friday (dress as silly as you want)

Reading:  So far, the avid readers have been focusing on fiction texts. This week, we shift to working in nonficiton texts! Students will learn to use precise words while teaching about what they learned from a text and to share their findings with their partners. Readers often begin sharing about a text by using one of the following prompts:

• I notice...
• I think...
• I wonder..
• What do you think? 
• Why do you think that? 

Practice using these prompts while reading at home too! 

Writing:  Opinion writers are on a roll writing letters to fix problems they see! Don't be surprised if you see some letters coming home about problems that can be changed. Writers are looking at a sample opinion letter to check to make sure they are doing the same things in their writing. The students can learn a lot from studying an example, which we call a mentor text. Talk with your child about possible problems they could write about. What do you see that could be better at home? The bus? The grocery store? How can they fix it?

Math: The math talk in our Kindergarten classroom includes many buzzwords such as subitizing, teen numbers, and partners. Ask your child what they can teach you about these expert math words! Kindergartners will continue their work with partners of ten, adding/subtracting, and shapes. Here are some fun ways to practice and build fluency at home:

• Dice games
• Roll 2 dice, add or subtract, record
• Cards
• Flip two cards over, add or subtract
• Go Fish--instead of looking for pairs, find cards that go together to make 5 or 10

Word Study: We will work on words with -en, et, and -en endings. We will discuss endings on words, especially focusing on the -s ending.

Social Studies: Kindergartners will continue to work on the following centers:

• Books—Students will read All About Me books. Then they will write their own!
• Photographs—We will sort pictures on a timeline. Then students will create their own timelines. 
• Collage—Kindergartners will look through magazines and cut out things that represent them. They will glue these onto a poster. We will share these at closing circle.
• Starfall.com—Students will work with partners on Ipads to “write” about themselves.

March 20-24

See the bottom of the blog for a few pictures from this past week!

Upcomign Events:

March 29: Crazy Hair/Hat Day

March 28 and 30: Parent Teacher Conferences

April 3: Sports Day

April 7: Knowledge-a-thon in the the AM

April 7: PAC field  trip in the PM

April 11: Egg Crack Off and Class Color Day

April 12-17: NO SCHOOL

April 21: Wear Green and Blue for Earth Day

April 28: Funky Friday (dress as silly as you want)

 PSC Sign Ups

Book Fair

http://signup.com/go/zkKGHy

Conference Meals

http://signup.com/go/bEgipo

Knowledge-A-Thon

http://signup.com/go/TNwaqh

What's Happening in Room 82: 

Reading:  As we continue to learn about becoming avid readers, students will have "playdates" during their partner reading time. According to research on cognitive development, children increase focus, stamina, self-regulation abilities, and abstract thinking through play. During the "reading playdates", book clubs will meet and can choose from a variety of fun activities to do with books. These activities could include: acting books out, playing school, having a read aloud, hunting for sight words, etc. Try one of these fun games while reading with your child at home! 

Writing: Writers will set goals to fix up their writing. They could choose to fix up spelling or punctuation. They could also choose to elaborate by adding more drawings and labels, telling more reasons to convince others of their opinions, or adding speech bubbles. These writers have done a wonderful job finding problems and writing about ways to make them better. They are quite convincing! 

Math: These Kindergarten mathematicians have dug deep into the meaning behind the plus and minus sign. We will learn that we need to pay close attention to what sign is used in an equation in order to solve problems correctly. We will discuss what strategies work best for these mathematicians when solving problems. They might use their fingers, make a drawing, build with tools, count on from a number or visualize the problem. These are all great ways for Kindergarten students to be solving equations.  

Word Study:  We will continue to work with transferring our sight word and sort knowledge into our reading and writing.

Social Studies: After starting to think about what makes them so special, students will have a chance to show what makes them unique in the following centers:

• Books—Students will read All About Me books. Then they will write their own!
• Photographs—We will sort pictures on a timeline. Then students will create their own timelines. 
• Collage—Kindergarteners will look through magazines and cut out things that represent them. They will glue these onto a poster. We will share these at closing circle.
• Starfall.com—Students will work with partners on Ipads to “write” about themselves.

A guest reader visited for St. Patrick's Day!

I was SO impressed with how readers met in groups to act out, read, and talk about their books! 

March 13-17

Notes from Room 82: 

Here is a link to view pictures from our field trip and other recent science related activities!

If you child is participating in the FANG Reading program. Please have them turn in their slips weekly. They will receive prizes as they go. If you child starts now, and meets the requirements, you can sent them all in at once! :)

Notes from NDLC: 

Check out this  months newsletter to learn more about birthday boxes and the other important happenings in our school!

Summer School:

 There are so many exciting offerings for summer school this year. Have you seen them? If not, here is the course description packet. Registration opens on Sunday, March 19th at 2:00 pm. There are a few New Directions Teachers teaching summer school this year. Check out this list to see what classes are being taught by New Directions teachers. I am sure you will agree that there are many great options for enrichment this year!

 A message from Student Council: 

HOORAY! Our 3D printer was fully funded! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

As you begin your spring cleaning, please look for magnets, old electronics, toy cars, Knex, and legos. We will also take household items like measuring cups, paper products and utensils. Basic office supplies would also be helpful when building our makerspace. As always, you can send monetary donations with your child to contribute toward makerspace supplies. 

NDLC Running Club: New Directions is starting an after school running club!  Please watch your child's folder for information on the Running Club. 

If you can help at any of the following, here are the sign-ups:

Book Fair 

http://signup.com/go/zkKGHy

Conference Meals

http://signup.com/go/bEgipo

Knowledge-A-Thon

http://signup.com/go/TNwaqh

Upcoming events:

March 15: No School

March 29: Crazy Hair/Hat Day

March 28 and 30: Parent Teacher Conferences

What's Happening in Room 82: 

Reading:  Kindergartners will learn about being an avid reader. We will sort pictures of avid readers and "blah" readers to identify what readers can do to become even stronger! Students will start to post it ideas and notice character feelings to share with their reading partners.

Readers are flexible problem solvers. When we get to a tricky word, here are some things we try:

Writing: After sharing so much knowledge in our all about books, the writers are going to start sharing their opinions! We will start with a “Buffer Day”. We use these days to introduce our new genre to the students. Together, we will write an opinion piece as a class. We will talk specifically about writing opinion letters and students will write letters about their opinion on things that shouldbe changed in our room.

Math: We will be working on our fluency this week. By the end of the year in Kindergarten, students are expected to add and subtract fluently within five. We will look for +1, -1, +0, and -0 patterns to help us add and subtract quickly. We will continue looking at partners of ten and discuss how using five groups helps us subitize and see partners quickly. Mathematicians will also review position words and shapes this week. 

Word Study:   Our words this week will be: red, yellow, blue, then, & was.

Social Studies: We will start to build a base for our Self Study inquiry with a read aloud, video aloud, and song. Students will have whole class conversation about the book It’s Okay to be Different by Todd Parr. We will create a class book after watching a video of a poem called, “I am Me!” Here is the link  to the poem. Each student will add a page that says, “No one _____ the way I ____.” Finally, we will create a self-portrait after listening to  the song “What I Am” by Will.I.Am. Here is the link to the song. I am excited for students to start thinking about what makes them special…we know they are!

March 6-10

Hello everyone!

We are anxious for our field trip to the Paper Discovery Center on Tuesday! We can't wait to extend our knowledge of wood and paper and participate in hands-on activities to wrap up our unit. In addition to the field trip, we will end our unit by constructing wood and paper projects. If you have any paper, box or wood supplies (that would fit into your child's backpack) that you would be willing to donate , please send them to school by Friday!

Upcoming events:
March 7: Paper Discovery Field Trip
March 10: Author's Breakfast 7:15-7:45 am
March 29: Crazy Hair/Hat Day
March 28 and 30: Parent Teacher Conferences

Reading:  As nonfiction readers, we have learned how to identify the main topic of our books and retell key details by pointing to text evidence in the book! This week, we will transfer that learning by teaching others about our topics and writing about them. Students will act out their books and real aloud (just like a teacher!) to share their books and learning with peers. We will celebrate our nonfiction unit on Friday by creating posters about our favorite main topics. Check around the hallways of school to view your child's work! 

Writing:   We will make their books the best they can be by adding more details and fixing up all conventions. Students will use a checklist to help them get ready to publish. We are excited to share our all about books on Friday during our Author's Breakfast! Stop by between 7:15-7:45 to read our books! 

Math: Mathematicians are digging deeper into teen numbers. We know that teen numbers are a group of ten and extras; we will discover that mathematicians can see that when the build numbers OR look at equations. We will use math mountains as a way to see partners of a number; they look for how many "tumblers" are on each side of the mountain and know they work together to make that total. Another concept mathematicians will work on is seeing groups of objects and knowing what has more and less because they subitize. 

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

Science: We will paint our paper mache bowls and weave with paper. As a culminating activity for our wood and paper unit, students will be planning and constructing a piece using wood and paper supplies. I can't wait to see what they dream up!