Newsletter Updates - Week of October 3rd

DATES TO REMEMBER:
-Thursday, Oct. 6th—Elementary Title 1 Night
-Friday, Oct. 7th—Progress Reports Home
-Monday, Oct 10th—Delayed Start

STUDENT OF THE WEEK:
Our student of the week is Ali Wright. Ali enjoys going to the beach and spending time with her family. Her favorite color is purple and when she grows up, she’d like to be a mom. Congratulations to Ali on being Student of the Week!
**Please remember to send in your child’s student of the week poster ASAP or pick up another copy Thursday evening.

ELEMENTARY TITLE 1 NIGHT:
This year we are combining all of our grade level Title 1 Nights into one Elementary-wide Title 1 Night. This event is scheduled for this Thursday, October 6th. We are asking families to RSVP, so that we can plan for food—Pizza! I encourage you to attend! In addition to dinner being served, each teacher will have specific learning activities set up in their classrooms, as well as handouts and materials for you to take with you to practice important skills at home. There will also be opportunities to enter into a drawing for some great prizes! Please get your RSVPs in ASAP. Hope to see you there!!

PROGRESS REPORTS/DIBELS:
Progress reports will be sent home this Friday with students. We are really beginning to fall into a nice routine here at school and gel together as a class. The progress report will give you an idea of how your child is doing socially and with following the rules and routines at school. You will also receive your child’s DIBELS results for ‘first sound fluency’ and ‘letter naming.’ A couple of things to keep in mind with DIBELS: their score indicates how many correct responses they had in a minute, also it takes time and practice for Kindergartners to learn what the assessor is asking them to do. However, it does give us a starting point as we begin targeting skills and needs. If you have any questions regarding your child’s progress at school, please don’t hesitate to give me a call or stop in.

READING:
This week we will be reading Mice Squeak, We Speak as we work on rhyming, identifying parts of a book, and comprehension skills. Our focus letters this week are I, K, O, & Z. This week we will also begin talking about opposites.

WRITING:
Today we read through our September Journals and talked about how good writers go back and ‘edit’ their work. Students are bringing their journals home today to share with you. Please take some time and look through them with your child. Some things we’ve worked on this month are: drawing a big picture and using at least 3 colors. This week we will begin our October Journals and use the book The Wind Blew to talk about ideas, organization, word choice, and voice.

SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES:
This week we will be focusing on Fall and the changes that are happening outside. On Friday, we will conduct a sink and float experiment with acorns and graph our results. We will also have a visit from Scrappy the Squirrel (puppet) who will have plenty to share about Fall. We will continue our Unit on Living and Nonliving Things. Last week we learned that all living things grow, change, and move on their own. This week we will learn about what living things ‘need’ to live and grow.

MATH:
This week we will be working on matching and counting objects 1-10, patterning, and sorting. We will also continue to practice naming and identifying shapes and writing our numbers.