We are collecting paper towel tubes and toilet paper tubes for an upcoming STEM activity. Please keep them and send them in! Thank you!
Please be on the look out for the Valentine Homework that will be coming home today! See below.
Dear Kindergarten Parents, Please help your child with this special friendship homework and have them return it no later than Friday, February 5th to share with the class. Enclosed you will find one large heart and the name of a student in our classroom. Please help your child think of three different words to describe their classmate. Have your child write the three words to describe their classmate and their classmate’s name on the large heart. Be creative, and feel free to decorate and add details to the Valentine! I have included additional paper for your use. Please bring the Valentine back to school to be shared with the class. Thank you! Mrs. Revay This week I finally finished Winter assessments. FINALLY! Report cards go home on Monday! I am so proud of all of their progress and it is amazing to see how much they have grown over the past few months. One common area in reading that we will be focusing on is blending sounds in spoken and written words and segmenting sounds in spoken and written words. For example, c at = cat and cat = /c/ /a/ /t/. I will post some ways you can support your reader at home with these skills.
Today, we did a STEM activity. Students were given a choice of many materials and were asked to design something that floats. We wrote our question in our math journal and drew a picture of our design. We labeled our materials and started building. We will try out our designs on Monday. I posted a few pics to shutterfly and I will post more on Monday. We will finish up our Winter Personal Narrative Unit this week with an editing checklist that students can use during Writer's Workshop and Daily 5. This checklist will remind them to use finger spaces, use punctuations, use uppercase letters at the beginning of their sentences and use the word wall to spell words. Our next writing unit is Informational Writing: Letter Writing. During this unit, students will continue to develop their skills around informational writing during this second teaching of the unit.
Writers will:
This unit will continue the students’ exploration into informational writing about familiar topics. I will ask students to decide who they would like to send REAL letters to after this unit so that this experience is authentic to students. Writer's Workshop has been our biggest area of growth since we got back from winter break. Students are filling their pages with words separated by finger spaces! We have been working on writing personal narratives and have been talking in depth about characters, setting, details (emotions and zooming in to small moments). Students have been experimenting adding these parts to their small moment writing. Most students are not having a problem writing several sentences, which is great to see at this point in the year. Areas where students are continuing to work on include: making sure their finger spaces aren't too big or too small (we use two finger spaces or a popsicle stick), writing with appropriate capital and lower case letters, writing legibly and sounding out all the sounds in words (working toward writing phonetically by the end of the year).
In Daily 5, I have been meeting with students to assess phonics and phonemic awareness, star words, developmental spelling, letters and sounds in preparation for report cards that go home at the end of the month. Most students knew 3-7 star words in October at conferences and now most students know 20-26! Huge progress! I am so pleased with all of the growth that I am seeing in their learning! It's exciting to see them grow as a learner and feel so proud of themselves! In math, students are working on story problems, addition, number recognition, number writing, and money (pennies and nickels). Math Seeds is back up and running if you would like your child to work on this program at home. We only have 2-3 ipads in the classroom each day so they don't always get a chance to work on Reading Eggs and Math Seeds at school. We did four crystal experiments this past week. We made salt crystals, baking soda crystals, charcoal crystals, and borax crystals. Students have been keeping a crystal journal where they are keeping track of materials, drawings and predictions. We will spend the next few days observing the crystals and writing and drawing what we see and wonder. Our next Parent Led Art is scheduled for Tuesday, January 19th at 1:00. The Parent Volunteer calendar is up in the hall if you would like to come in and volunteer! Hope everyone is doing well! Let's hope for no rain tomorrow so the kiddos can get outside for lunch recess! 3 days of inside recess is making everyone a little stir crazy and the energy is high! I hope you all enjoyed your winter break and extra days off! Thank you all so much for thinking of me at the holidays. The gifts and cards are so appreciated and I am thankful to you all.
I have to say, your kiddos really showed me a welcome back by coming in today, ready to learn! We were able to pick up right where we left off and as we spent the day review, review, reviewing, they really impressed me by what they were able to recall. We reviewed our icharts during Daily 5 and discussed expectations for learning. In writing, we reviewed the types of writing that we have learned so far this year (Pattern writing, Small moment writing, and Opinion writing) and students filled their pages with legible stories and finger spaces! In math, we reviewed icharts for behavior expectations. Mrs. L. is currently meeting with them to talk about the Kelso Wheel and solving small problems and big problems. We will finish the day by making salt crystals and writing our observations in journals. |
AuthorThis is my sixth year teaching Kindergarten at a wonderful school in SE Portland. Archives
April 2016
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