Newsletter Updates for the Week of September 19th

DATES TO REMEMBER:

-Friday, Sept. 23rd—Mobile Dentist

-Friday, Sept. 23rd—Book Orders Due

-Friday, Sept. 23rd—Alumni Parade & Game

-Friday, Sept. 30th—Progress Reports Home

WALKING FIELDTRIP: 

Our walking fieldtrip to the Butterfly Garden on Friday was a success!  It was a great way to wrap up our first 5 day week! Special thanks to Laura Quist & Kelly Taylor for doing such a nice job of presenting and also to Micah Beckman for helping us get there and back safe and sound. :)

VOLUNTEERING: 

I’ve tried to make contact with all of the parents who indicated on their survey that they would like to volunteer in the classroom.  The volunteer schedule is coming together nicely for September and October.  I know schedules change throughout the year, so if you’d like to volunteer at any point, please let me know. I rely on parent volunteers to complete special projects, help with assessments, and to help provide extra academic support to students.   I’m looking forward to getting some of these projects going this week! 

READING:

This week our reading lessons will focus on the letters S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, & Z.  We will also review the sightwords—I & can and practice identifying rhyming words in songs and rhymes. Our focus story for this week is Kindergarteners Can which we will use to practice building our listening and comprehension skills. This week we will introduce two new beanie baby strategies: Lips the Fish who reminds us to look at the first letter of the word and get our lips ready with that sound to help us figure out the words while we are reading, and Jabber the Reteller who reminds us that good readers can build comprehension skills by recalling and retelling key elements from the story.

WRITING: 

We will continue our unit on Speaking & Listening as we talk about ‘things we know and can do.’  We will be talking about the importance of including colors and details and we’ll practice this by drawing a detailed picture of Mrs. Brinks and by adding colors and details to our sketches that we drew at the Butterfly Garden on Friday.  The students are really enjoying the Letter School app for learning how to write letters and numbers; this week we will learn a new app called Write My Name.

MATH:

We will focus on identifying and writing the numbers 6-9. We will practice describing and sorting shapes, as well as identifying & extending patterns.

SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES: 

This week we will begin reading and talking about Fall, and all of the changes that occur in Fall. We will also begin our Science unit on ‘living and non-living things.’