I am interested in doing several STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) projects in our classroom and am seeking some donated items.
I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving! I posted new pics to shutterfly.
Our new writing unit, Personal Narrative, helps students write stories about their lives and experiences. This unit will be taught three times throughout the school year. Each time we will build on previously taught skills and the students’ writing will become more developed. During the first teaching of Personal Narrative students will:
This unit will begin an exploration into writing stories from their own experiences. I will be at a training this Friday, November 21st. My sub will be Mr. Moylan. He is familiar with Llewellyn as he has subbed throughout the building.
Next week is a short week. There is no school on Thursday, Nov. 27 or Friday, Nov. 28. In reading, we are learning new strategies that will help us when we come to words that we don't know. We are practicing sounding them out, blending sounds, using the picture, and looking at beginning and ending sounds. When you are reading at home with your child, help them with these strategies rather than simply telling them the word. This will help foster their independence when they are reading to self in our classroom and help them become better readers. In writing, we have been working on using several different strategies including: stretching out our words, using the word wall, using our alphabet charts, and using the magic line when we get stuck. I would like to see students beginning to use upper case letters at the beginning of their sentences consistently and putting periods at the ends of their sentences. I am also encouraging them to write with mostly lower case letters. Letter sounds we are working on this week in small groups include /a/ /m/ /t/ /c/ /s/ /p/. Our hand writing letter of the week is r. Star words that have recently been introduced are the and to.
I hope everyone had a great long weekend. I hope Friday went well with Mrs. Caplener. I am still getting over a cold but I will be back tomorrow! This is just a gentle reminder to please keep your child at home if they are ill. This is already the second round of illness that has gone through our classroom this year. Hoping we can all stay well into the New Year!
We are attending a play on Friday at the Newmark Theatre. I still need one parent chaperone to attend. Please let me know ASAP if you would like to join us. Students need to bring a lunch to school that day as we will miss our normal lunch time. We will leave school around 9 and return around 11:30. This Friday, November 14th and Saturday, November 15th is Llewellyn's Holiday Market and Kindergarten Bake Sale. I will resend the parent helper schedule to you tomorrow with the time/date that you are signed up to help out. If you signed up to donate baked goodies, please individually wrap them and bring them in on Friday morning or Friday, at 1:30. If you are signed up to help on Saturday and would like to bring your baked goodies on Saturday instead that should be fine as well. Market begins at 2:30 on Friday and 10 a.m. on Saturday. Stacey has generously offered to collect goodies on Friday morning (in the Kinder hallway, we'll prop back doors open at 7:45) and a few parent helpers will be collecting goodies beginning at 1:30 on Friday afternoon in the main hallway. This week, we will be learning about American Indians of the Pacific Northwest. We will be reading and talking about food, shelter, culture, and customs of American Indians. This unit is meant to be an introduction and will hopefully lead to good conversations! In reading, students are reading books at their level (some students are still working on letter names and sounds). Some of the strategies that we have been working on when we get to words we don't know include: looking at beginning and ending sounds, looking for picture clues, and cross checking (does it look right, sound right, make sense?). I will be attending a few trainings and workshops this month and next month, so I will be out of the classroom a few times. In regard to my maternity leave, I am in conversation with a substitute teacher who comes highly recommended. Hopefully, I will be able to let you know who she/he is soon and get her/him in for me to sub as much as possible before March. Even as an adult reader, there are times when I am reading a story and I get
lost and am not sure what has happened. Fortunately, when this happens, I have strategies I use to help me understand the story. The same thing happens when children read. However, with children they often keep reading and do not realize they lost comprehension until the end of the story. They are too concerned with reading accurately, and forget to take the time to think about what they are reading. How can we help them gain comprehension? We can teach them the comprehension strategy: check for understanding because good readers stop frequently to check for understanding or to ask who and what. How can you help your child with this strategy at home? 1. When reading to your child, stop periodically and say, “Let’s see if we remember what I just read. Think about who the story was about and what happened.” Do this 3 or 4 times throughout the story. 2. When reading to your child, stop and have them practice checking for understanding by saying, “I heard you say…” 3. Ask your child the following questions: • Who did you just read about? • What just happened? • Was your brain talking to you while you read? • Do you understand what was read? • What do you do if you don’t remember? Thank you for your continued support at home! • • Ideas and strategies are taken from: The CAFE Book, written by Gail Boushey & Joan Moser • Created by Allison Behn © 2009 www.thedailycafe.com An important accuracy strategy that good readers use to help gain meaning
from text is to use the pictures and ask “Do the words and picture match?”. Pictures help to confirm that the words being read make sense. Illustrations can provide hints to help students decode a word. Using the pictures is a necessary strategy to help children prepare for other strategies they use as they become more developed readers. Many times beginning readers feel they are “cheating” when they look at the pictures. It is important to model the effectiveness of using pictures to help decode words and to gain meaning so children feel comfortable using this strategy and know it is “okay” to use the pictures when reading. How can you help your child with this strategy at home? 1. Start with beginning reading books that only have a few words on the page. The pictures give clear support for figuring out the meaning and the words. 2. Cover up the words on a page and have your child “read” the story to you by “reading” the pictures. After your child tells you what happened on the page, uncover the words and read the page. This supports the idea that pictures can help tell the story. 3. When reading a picture book with your child, spend time modeling how you look at pictures, maps, and graphs. Talk about your thinking so your child can hear your thought process. Be sure to model how you stop while you are reading to look at the pictures to help you gain information about what is going on. 4. Reading pictures also includes graphs, maps, charts, and their captions. It is a powerful nonfiction reading strategy that can be used to help support a child when reading different textbooks. Remind your child to use this strategy when studying for tests or when writing reports. Thank you for your continued support at home! · Written by: Allison Behne ©www.thedailycafe.com · Ideas and strategies are taken from: The CAFE Book, written by Gail Boushey & Joan Moser Thank you to everyone for attending parent/teacher conferences last week. I am so glad that I got to meet with all of you and talk about what is happening in the classroom and the progress that I am already seeing in these first two months of school. As we head into November, please make sure that you look at the school calendar as we do not have a late opening this month. Please note that students do not have school on Monday, November 10 and Tuesday, November 11. There is also no school on Thursday, November 27 and Friday, November 28.
As of right now, I am not planning on doing a homework journal with students. However, I would like students to be reading at home with you EVERY night and I will be sending home Parent Pipelines with reading strategies that students are working on in the classroom. These will have suggestions for how to help your child at home. Please let me know if you would like additional support in fostering at home learning. We have focused on all letters and sounds in our classroom through Zoo Phonics. This is reinforced with daily phonics practice. However, we have spent more time on the letters/sounds /m/ /t/ /a/ /i/ /f/ /d/ /s/. Students have also been introduced to the following Kindergarten Sight Words: I, a, am, we, will, see, have, go, can, like. We finished up our pumpkin unit last week, and planted pumpkin seeds to see if they would sprout, even though this isn't the right season. We put some seeds in water so we could see what happens to the seed, and we put some seeds in dirt. We also filled a pumpkin with dirt and watered it to see if the seeds inside would grow... I will post pictures if anything happens! I posted pictures to our shutterfly account. We did a scavenger hunt with our fourth grade buddies and we had a special presentation on germs and hand washing from the Student Nurse at our school. |
AuthorThis is my sixth year teaching Kindergarten at a wonderful school in SE Portland. Archives
April 2016
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