Newsletter Updates for the Week of September 25th

DATES TO REMEMBER:

-Thurs. September 28th—NWEA Testing—Math

-Friday, September 29th—NWEA Testing—Math

-Friday, September 29th—Progress Reports Home

ITEMS NEEDED: 

Please send in a gallon milk jug (empty and rinsed out) and a full roll of toilet paper for us to use for a couple of fun art projects—we are excited to begin decorating our hallway and classroom for Fall!

ASSESSMENTS: 

We are currently in the process of doing our beginning of the year benchmarking assessments. We’ve completed our Math Recovery Assessment and this week they will be doing DIBELS for Reading. This week we will also be going to the computer lab to complete our NWEA testing for Reading & Math. It seems like a lot for these little ones, I know, but we will ‘learn’ the process together and the only way to measure growth is to have a starting point:) I will be sharing all of your child’s assessment data with you in the near future and we will be coming up with a plan for growth together.

READING:

We’ve quickly made it through introducing ALL of the letters of the alphabet and now we will slow our pace a bit and focus on one letter each week This week our reading lessons will focus on the letter Mm and we will introduce a new sightword—the. Our focus story is What About Bear? Which we will use to practice building our listening and comprehension skills. This week we will introduce 2 new beanie baby strategies: Questioning Owl who reminds us to stop and ask ourselves questions about the story while we are reading and Spinner Spider who helps us remember to ‘make connections’ as we read.  At the end of this week, students will receive new materials in their book boxes that they can read during Read to Self time, which means they will be bringing home their books that you provided at the beginning of the year. This is our first, of many, reading milestones that we will reach this year!

WRITING:

We will begin learning about ‘small moment’ stories this week. We will investigate how writers use uppercase and lowercase letters to make words, and complete a picture, letter, and word sort.  We will write about what the trees are doing in Fall and use our imagination to create a class book based on Mercer Mayer’s book There’s a Nightmare in My Closet.

MATH:

We will practice describing and comparing shapes, as we focus on triangles. We will also play several games with dot cards as we practice identifying and matching different quantities of dots, as well as comparing which card has more and which card has less dots.

SCIENCE & SOCIAL STUDIES:

This week we will continue reading and talking about the changes that occur in Fall. We will have a special visit from Scrappy the Squirrel who will tell us what he’s up to this time of year AND we will conduct a fun experiment with acorns.  Our elementary character trait this month is KINDNESS; we will be reading several books related to kindness and compassion and practice showing kindness to others at home and school. They are all trying very hard to earn their ‘kindness token’ this month.

I will send home blankets this Friday; please wash and send them back for rest time next week.

Newsletter Updates for the Week of September 18th

DATES TO REMEMBER:

-Thurs, September 21st—NWEA Testing—Reading

-Friday, September 22nd—NWEA Testing—Reading

-Monday, September 25th—DIBELS Testing

-Thurs. September 28th—NWEA Testing—Math

-Friday, September 29th—NWEA Testing—Math

-Friday, September 29th—Progress Reports Home

STUDENT OF THE WEEK: 

Our student of the week is Sarai Paz Garcia. Sarai enjoys singing, dancing, and running. Her favorite foods include sandwiches, eggs, and hot dogs; her favorite movie is My Little Pony. One of Sarai’s goals is to ride her bike; keep practicing Sarai and you’ll get it! Congratulations to Sarai on being our Student of the 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 nursery 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 their comprehension skills by recalling and retelling key elements from the story.

MATH:

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

WRITING:

We will wrap up our unit on Speaking & Listening as we talk about ‘things we know and can do.’ This week students will come up with their own story idea, practice picturing it in their minds, rehearse it by telling it to a partner, and then draw and write about it.  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.

SCIENCE & SOCIAL STUDIES:

Last week we released our butterflies and sent them on their long journey to Mexico. We also took a walking fieldtrip to the Butterfly Garden on Thursday and did some exploring of living things. This week we will continue learning about what living things need to survive and grow and we will also begin reading and talking about Fall and all of the changes that will be occurring.

VOLUNTEERING: 

I’ve tried to make contact with all of the parents who indicated on their surveys that they would like to volunteer in the classroom. I’m working on setting up some special projects in the coming weeks, so please let me know if and when you are available to come in and help out:)

Newsletter - Week of September 11th

DATES TO REMEMBER:

-Tuesday, September 12th—K-2 Picture Day

-Monday, September 18th—Delayed Start (10:00)

-Friday, September 29th—Progress Reports Home

PICTURE DAY: 

Our picture day is tomorrow—Tuesday, September 12th. ALL students will be photographed for the yearbook and library cards. If you’d like to purchase pictures, please be sure to send in your payment and completed envelope by Tuesday morning. Don’t forget your SMILE!

TESTING:

We will be completing our beginning of the year screeners and assessments over the next couple of weeks. We will visit the computer lab to take the NWEA Map Assessment—a computer-based assessment for both Math & Reading. We will also be completing DIBELS testing and a Number Words and Numerals Assessment one-on-one with the students. This will allow us to identify students who might need some extra supports at home and school. I’ll be sharing their results with you so that you can be an active part of your child’s success!

READING:

This week our reading lessons will focus on the letters I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q & R. We will also introduce the sightword—can.  We will continue to work on recognizing, naming, and writing our letters during literacy stations. The students have learned a couple of fun learning apps on their ipads and are enjoying starfall.com on the computer each day. They are also doing a nice job of reading from their book boxes during ‘read-to-self’ time after lunch. This week we will introduce Eagle Eye who reminds us to look at the pictures for clues to figure out the words while we are reading.

WRITING:

We will continue our unit on Speaking & Listening as we talk about ‘things we know and can do.’ We will also learn about questions words and practice using them—who, what, when, where, why, & how, as well as prepositional phrases (positional words) - on, under, between, over, etc. We will complete a couple of journal pages about butterflies and our families, as we practice adding colors and details.

MATH:

We will be learning how to identify and write the numbers 2, 3, 4, & 5. We will also practice counting items using one-to-one correspondence and work on building numbers using different manipulatives. We will create and interpret data with graphs this week; we will graph our birthdays and our ages.

SCIENCE & SOCIAL STUDIES:

This week we will release our butterflies so that they can migrate to Mexico—the students have been so excited to watch this process! We will continue our study of Living Things as we learn the 7 Traits of Living Things—eat, move, breathe, sense, reproduce, excrete, & grow. We will also begin learning about the things that living things NEED in order to live—air, water, food, space, & shelter. In Social Studies we will wrap up our Unit on School Rules by learning some fair ways to make decisions in a group. We will also read  the book: Have You Filled a Bucket Today? which has a wonderful message about spreading kindness to others.

THANK YOU: 

I just wanted to say a big ‘Thank You’ to all of you for being so generous in providing supplies for our classroom. It is great to have the cupboards stocked and ready for a great year of learning and fun! Thanks so much!

Newsletter - Week of September 5th

DATES TO REMEMBER:

-Friday, September 8th—Book Orders Due

-Tuesday, September 12th—K-2 Picture Day

-Monday, September 18th—Delayed Start

We had a busy first week getting to know each other and beginning to establish our classroom routines. It will take a few weeks to get the routines down, but this group is doing a fantastic job! Thursday was an especially busy day as we chased the Gingerbread Man all around the school. We visited many places and met several important people who work at our school. We finally found our Gingerbread Man back in our classroom and we quickly gobbled him up before he could run away again. The students were very excited; I hope you had a chance to hear about it.

STUDENT OF THE WEEK: 

Our student of the week is Kyran Boersma. Kyran is ‘bubbly’ & kind and loves building & creating with Legos. A couple of his favorite movies are Minions & Paw Patrol and he enjoys eating hot dogs & chicken nuggets.  One goal Kyran has for this year is to work on being more patient, which is a great goal for us all. Congratulations to Kyran on being our Student of the Week!

READING:

The next 3 weeks we will be focusing on learning our letters by studying the letters in our names; we will also introduce 2 letters each day and do several activities with the focus letters. Once we’ve made it through the entire alphabet, we will then start an in-depth study of each letter, spending a week on each letter.  This week our reading lessons will  focus on the letters A, B, C, D, E, F, G, & H. We will also introduce our first sightword—I.  We will spend time learning the parts of a book and practice tracking print from left to right, as we read and recite familiar nursery rhymes.

BOOK BOXES:

We will begin reading our own books from home by the end of this week—so please bring in your 5-8 books if you still need to.  We will learn 3 ways to read a book—reading by looking at the pictures, retelling a familiar story from memory, & reading the words. Our goal is that students will begin seeing themselves as ‘readers.’

WRITING:

This week we will complete a couple journals about ourselves—a self-portrait, what we like to do at school, and our friends at school. Students will be practicing writing their names, handwriting the letters A-H, and writing simple sentences using the sightword I. When practicing writing your child’s name with them at home, please be sure to begin with an uppercase letter and use lowercase for the rest of their name.  Also, when forming our letters, we always stress starting our letters at the top:)

MATH: 

This week we will go on a Number Hunt, looking for numbers around our classroom and the school. We will be learning how to write and represent the numbers 0 & 1. We will also practice counting items using one-to-one correspondence.

SCIENCE & SOCIAL STUDIES:

This week we will continue to read many books about starting school and what it means to be a ‘good friend.’  We will also learn about the American Flag and learn the Pledge of Allegiance. In Science, we will  begin our unit on Living and Non-Living things; our Monarch caterpillars are now safe inside their chrysalises and we will be watching and waiting for them to emerge as butterflies.