March 4th - Newsletter Updates

DATES TO REMEMBER:

-Friday, March 8th—Wear Your Words—wear something with words on it

-Friday, March 15th—Move Star Day—wear your bling, boas, hats, ties, sunglasses, etc.

-Friday, March 22nd—Pajama & Popcorn Day

                           Half Day—Dismissal @ 11:35

PASTRIES WITH PARENTS:

What an AWESOME turnout we had—THANK YOU for taking the time to come in and read with us!!  I absolutely LOVE this time of year when the students get to take home books to read with their parents.  It’s AMAZING to see them blossoming into READERS!!!

READING MONTH: 

Our Theme this year is Lights! Camera! Read! and the genre that Kindergarten will be spotlighting is Nursery Rhymes!  Please send in a flashlight for your child to keep in their book box to read with for the Month of March.  The students will be earning tickets during our Read to Self & Partner Reading times at school.

AND THE PACE QUICKENS:

Report cards are complete and ready to send home on Monday! For those who didn’t have a conference, I’ve included their DIBELS & NWEA results, as well as copies of their classroom assessments. As you look over their report card and assessments, please let me now if you have any questions or concerns.  We’ve established some great routines and foundational skills; now the pace quickens a bit. We will still be adding 2 new sightwords each week, learning a total of 51 sightwords this year; and instead of 1 letter a week, we will be focusing on 2 letters a week. I am beefing up my interventions at school for those students who need some extra practice and support with skills. You can help as well by reviewing these same skills at home. Now that we have many strategies in our toolboxes for reading—you should be seeing your child grow as a reader. I’ll send home take-home reading folders a couple times a week and they can do Raz-Kids at home as well.

READING:

CONTINUING FROM LAST WEEK— our class will be focusing on the 4 seasons and how they are different. We will be reading stories and poems related to the weather in each season.

· Vocabulary—weather & seasons

· Sightwords—is & little

· Category Words—seasons

· Phonics—Letters Bb & Ll

· Beanie Baby Strategies—We will introduce Skippy Frog for Accuracy. Skippy helps us when we come to a word that we just cannot figure out; he reminds us that we can ‘skip’ the word, read on, try to use the context clues to figure it out, and then go back and reread the sentence.

WRITING: 

We’ve completed our pattern book unit and we will begin our next unit of study—Small Moments—by reading several small moments stories and discussing the qualities. This week we will be editing our January/February Journals to bring home to share and we will be reading and writing about Nursery Rhymes.

MATH:  

This week we will measure how tall we are and practice comparing lengths. We will be creating a graph of our pets and analyzing the data.  We will also be hosting a 3D solid shape museum in our classroom on Friday, and ask that each student bring in 2-3 items from home that are either a cone, cube, sphere, cylinder, or rectangular prism. 

SCIENCE & SOCIAL STUDIES: 

This week we will be reviewing the 4 seasons and the weather patterns that come with each season.  In addition, we will begin learning about the Sun and it’s heating effects on Earth.

Please be sure to return your February Book-it Calendar!