Newsletter Updates for the Week of May 1st

DATES TO REMEMBER:

-Friday, May 5th—Muffins with Mom

-Friday, May 12th—Muffins with Mom

-Monday, May 15th—Delayed Start

-Saturday, May 20th—Color Run

-Friday, May 26th—Fun to Be Fit

-Monday, May 29th—Memorial Day – No School

-Tuesday, May 30th—Kindergarten Concert @ 1:30

-Thursday, June 1st—Fieldtrip to Kettunen Center

-Friday, June 2nd—K-2 Track & Field Day (pm)

-Friday, June 2nd—Sophomore Carnival

-Saturday, June 3rd—Bike-a-thon

STUDENT OF THE WEEK: 

Our student of the week is Brady Walenjus.  Brady likes to swim, play Legos, and eat apples & pizza. His favorite movie is Lego Batman and his favorite book is Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site.  His goals include learning to read and write which he excels at doing each and every day!  He is looking forward to becoming a big brother, very soon! Congratulations to Brady on being our Student of the Week!

ASSESSMENTS:

As we prepare to wrap up the school year, we will be assessing student growth in many areas. We will be going back to the computer lab for our NWEA assessment in Reading & Math. In the next couple of weeks, students will also complete their Spring Dibels & Aimsweb benchmarking assessments, so keep practicing those nonsense words. All month long we’ll be assessing for report cards. Please make sure your child is well-rested and remind them to ALWAYS do their best! :)

READING:

This week our class will be reading stories about how children can be good citizens. They will learn how to listen, share, help others, respect one another, work together, and take turns. Here are some activities you can do with your child to help reinforce the skills we will be practicing:

· Vocabulary—citizen & respect—Discuss ways your child can show good citizenship and respect for others at school and in the community.

· Sightwords—play, has, & all—Keep on practicing reading and writing those sightwords from memory using flashcards and/or their fluency chart in their take-home reading folder.

· Category Words—farm animals—Name farm animals and then name their babies (pig/piglet, cow/calf, etc.)

· Phonics—Long i & ch —make a list of words with short i—fin, pin, etc. then rewrite the words with a magic e and ‘flip’ the vowel sound to make a new word—fine, pine, etc. Make a list of words that begin and end with the digraph ch.

· Take-Home Reading Folders—I’m working on completing a final running record with each student so that I can reassess their reading level. This time of year students seem to grow by leaps and bounds with their reading!

WRITING: 

This week we will use the information we’ve collected on birds, ducks, and chicks to create a class book. We will also take some time to think about topics that we know a lot about (people, sports, animals, activities, etc) as we begin to plan for writing our own informational books next week.

MATH: 

This week we will focus on subtraction, skip counting by 2’s, building numbers using base 10 blocks, addition within 10, and writing our numbers from memory.  Several students are still struggling with writing their numbers backwards and those tricky teens and 20’s, so keep practicing writing numbers at home:)

SCIENCE & SOCIAL STUDIES: 

This week we will continue our study of lifecycles as we focus on reading and collecting information about tadpoles & frogs.

*Please note that Strep is going around. I had my turn with it last week and am hopefully on the mend now. Last week, several students were complaining of some of the same symptoms I was experiencing, so please be attentive to those signs.  Strep is something that doesn't go away on it's own without treatment.

*On Thursday we enjoyed watching the livestream feed from the World Robotics Competition in St. Louis, as we cheered on the Rambler Robotics Team together.  They didn't make it into the playoffs, but they had an amazing experience at both State and World Competitions.  As we watched a couple of matches, I saw sparks on interest ignite in my Kindergartners and I was amazed at their enthusiasm.  Robotics is a new program here at McBain, but I know there is growing interest at all levels.  As your child progresses through elementary school, be on the lookout for opportunities for them to get involved in Lego Robotics and Mrs. Freeland's after school coding club.