Thursday, November 19, 2015

Week of November 16, 2015

Letter of the Week:  
This week we will be working on the letter Ss.

Star Word:
she
said
The star word and the letter person worksheet were sent home on Monday in your child's red folder.

 Skills  
We are now working on Unit 4 in our Skills program. Students are doing really well with blending sounds together to make a word, and we are now learning how to stretch a word to hear all of its sounds. This is a harder skill that will take some time for most students to become comfortable with but they are doing great as a whole group! Every day we sound out 2 & 3 sound words. We are working on sounding out 4 sound words.
Letter that have been introduced so far in Unit 4:
n, h, s, f, v, zWords students should be able to read and write are: 
did, tag, tad, mad, dad, did, dim, it, at, cat, mat, dig, dog, van, fan, sat, sip, fit, fog, hog, not, an, man, can, tan, fin, tin, if, zit, zag, zig, sag, sad, oz, hit, hot

We are also focusing on handwriting during skills. A few days a week we write sentences together as the teachers walk around and make sure all students are bumping the lines, spacing out their words and making the letters close together in a word. The students are loving the sentences and at this point in the year, it is done with a teacher modeling at the board. :)

Centers
We will post pictures throughout the week to show you what your child has been working on.
As you start to see some of the games and activities, talk to your child about what they were doing in  each center. 
Centers for this period:
Listening Center: The book called, The Ugly Duckling
Reading and Writing Center: Making a book for the word, "said"
Game Center: Word/ Letter Hunt 
Graphing: Sorting flat figures by their similar characteristics, tally & graphing "ex. four sides that are straight (rectangles), three sides (triangle)..."










Reading Centers 







Writing & Reading
In writing we will continue our Over the Weekend writing. I will model thinking about what I did over the weekend and putting the sounds I hear onto the paper. There will be different levels of writing occurring in the classroom. Some students will be able to add details to their picture, adding more sounds to a word, adding more words to their sentences and some will now work on adding punctuation to their sentences. Each student is getting what they need by a teacher sitting side-by-side and giving advice as to how they can make their writing even better.
We always start with a positive, "Wow, you really worked hard on..." Then we start to teach a skill, "Great writers also..." we model, "Let me show you..." and then we say, "Now you try...". This is a good way to work with your child at home. This is how we teach our writing/ reading lessons in class, whether it is whole group, small group or 1:1. 

In reading we are continuing to use picture clues to help us with our reading. We will also read quite a few rhyming books to become confident with our ability to rhyme words. We are good with simple rhymes like: cat, mat.. rap, tap... but need to work on words like: switch, twitch...  match, patch... play, May...

Try and find some rhyming books at the library and have your child finish sentences that include rhyming words! When we do this in class, everyone gets a kick out of thinking of a word that rhymes and makes sense in the sentence! We read, Rhyming Dust Bunnies on Monday last week and you should have heard them laughing. They thought the book was hilarious!!

As always, reading at home every night is encouraged.
Thank you!

Math  
This week we will start Unit 2 in our modules. All of the students did really well with numbers to 10. We will continue to practice forming these numbers this week as well as working on shapes.
Your child will have several discussions about shapes this week. Before we "name" a shape, we will describe it. I need all students to understand that a flat shape is a shape that does not have any openings. If a shape is not connected on all sides, then it is not considered a flat shape.
Within the lessons, students will be able to look around the room for each shape and draw the shape on a clipboard as they find it. We might bring this activity into the hallways to make it a little more enjoyable. Students will also make different shapes on their own personal geoboard. We will see if we can make shapes: bigger, smaller, longer, shorter, wider, thinner...
The shapes students will learn (or describe) this week are: rectangles, triangles, circles and hexagons.

 Farms
When students are finished with their work throughout the day, they are able to work on a farming center. They are really loving this new choice. Every child is choosing what they are interested in, and it's also giving me valuable information about their interests. I love to see what children pick when given a choice. Their choices range from: math worksheets, tangrams (making animals), books, coloring pages to reading books about different farm animals.
We have learned about tools on the farm, equipment, the role of the farmer and cows. Students learned that a calf is a baby cow last week. We will be making a cow craft sometime this week.
We will also learn about pigs, and chickens. 

Vocabulary your child will be introduced to: 
crops, harvest, pasture, calf, produce, grazing, calf, bull, hen, rooster, chick, peck...

We do not expect students to master all of this vocabulary, but it is important that they are exposed to this language. They will now have the prior knowledge that is necessary to gain mastery in future grade levels.



Thank you for visiting our blog!
Have a Super week!
:) 

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Week of November 9, 2015

Red, White and Blue Day
Tuesday, November 10th, 2015.
Don't forget to wear either: red, white or blue today! 
*We will have an assembly at the end of the day for RWB day.

Veterans Day
No School
Wednesday, November 11th, 2015.


Letter of the Week:  
This week we will be working on the letter Ii

Star Word:
you
The star word and the letter person worksheet will be sent home on Monday in your child's red folder.

 Skills  
On Monday and Tuesday we will complete the last 2 lessons in our skills book. Students are going to continue practicing the 8 sounds that have been taught with this program. All students should now be fluent with the following sounds: a, o, i, m, t, d, g and c. Students will be able to stomp and spell words, play spelling hopscotch, and spell words by holding a sound and manipulating themselves to form a word. Similar to last week, we will also write the new decodable words around the room on a vertical surface, on white boards, on lined paper, with my pocket chart and with the children's individual chaining folder.
We will also play "pass the sound" at each table. All students will need to quickly say the sound that they are holding. This is a game that not only works on recognizing sounds, but also helps with rapid naming which benefits reading fluency.
On Thursday we will start Unit 4. You will see the Skills book (from Unit 3) coming home with "Pausing Points" at the end of the book. You are more than welcome to complete these pages at home. Send in the extra work and I will give students a raffle ticket for every extra page that they complete. We will have a drawing at the end of the month where I will pick a few student to pick out of the prize box if their name is chosen. I will discuss this with students as well. Send in extra work but keep the Skills book at home to see what your child has done over the past few weeks!

Words students should be able to read and write are: 
did, tag, tad, mad, dad, did, dim, it, at, cat, mat, dig, dog...

Centers











When we finish our center rotations, students get to free read for a few minutes before we switch subjects. I LOVE listening to them read or make believe they are reading. A lot of the kids have "Star Word Hunts". They try to find the most amount of star words on one page. 






As you start to see some of the games and activities, talk to your child about what they were doing in  each center. The game that was a hit last week was, "Rapid Naming". We passed around a dice and students needed to quickly name an animal and then pass the dice to a partner. See if you can play similar games like this with your child at home. Start with categories that interest your child and then work up to harder concepts (like farm animals or farm vocabulary) ;) 
We will start our Farm Unit for Listening and Speaking this week. Start to get your child thinking about farm concepts, so that they are able to easily understand new concepts that are being taught. If you're going to the library, pick up some nonfiction farm animal books! 
Centers for this period:
Listening Center: The book called, Smiley Shark
Reading and Writing Center: Sentence cut and paste: "you"
Game Center: Rapid Naming, What says " ___", and Chaining folder
Graphing: Using candy corn

Writing & Reading
In writing we will start our Over the Weekend writing. I will model thinking about what I did over the weekend and putting the sounds I hear onto the paper. There will be different levels of writing occurring in the classroom. Some students will be able to add details to their picture, adding more sounds to a word, adding more words to their sentences and some will now work on adding punctuation to their sentences. Each student is getting what they need by a teacher sitting side-by-side and giving advice as to how they can make their writing even better.
We always start with a positive, "Wow, you really worked hard on..." Then we start to teach a skill, "Great writers also..." we model, "Let me show you..." and then we say, "Now you try...". This is a good way to work with your child at home. This is how we teach our writing/ reading lessons in class, whether it is whole group, small group or 1:1.


We wrote a "Thank You" letter to our Veterans on Monday! 




Below are a few examples, we will glue them onto construction paper on Tuesday!











We love our Veterans!!

In reading we are focusing on picture clues. On Friday we looked at the book called, The Very Lazy Ladybug and we talked about the vocabulary that was being introduced. We used the picture clues to figure out the definition of: ambled, plodded, swung...
The kids had great discussions about the vocabulary. They were studying the pictures to find out the meaning of new vocabulary and also using the pictures to figure out unknown words. We will continue working on picture clues this week.
Students will practice this with their new books in the book boxes. 


As always, reading at home every night is encouraged.
Thank you!

Math  
The kindergarten teachers had a discussion about our math program and the consensus was that "1 more" is the language we want to continue working on with students. After introducing "1 less" it became confusing for some students to become flexible with the language. We are going to work on only using "1 more" this week in class until ALL students are able to verbally explain what 1 more is for all numbers from 0-9.
There were however, some students that were flexible with the language and we will work (during centers) on pushing them to work on "1 less" and "1 more" but we are not making this an "end of module assessment question" until all students are ready. This language will be repeated in other units when all students are developmentally ready for it.

In centers we will work on: 
  • writing numbers 0-10 
  • pointing to each object (1:1 correspondence) as we count in a: circle, scattered, linear, array and 5-group
  • rolling a dice and adding one more
  • roll, write, tally (showing numbers in more than one way)

You can also play some of the "1 more" games for extra reinforcement. If they have mastered this,
see if your child can also do "1 less"!

 Farms
We are going to have baskets set up in the room to look through farm animal books & pictures. Animals that have not yet been presented will be in the bins and it will hopefully get the kids thinking and engaging in conversations that are NOT teacher directed! :)
Each day we will have informal conversations about an animal that is found on the farm. All kids will have a chance to come up with questions that they have about the animal we are discussing. Each day we will read books and learn new and interesting facts. 

Vocabulary your child will be introduced to: 
crops, harvest, pasture, calf, produce, grazing

We do not expect students to master all of this vocabulary, but it is important that they are exposed to this language. They will now have the prior knowledge that is necessary to gain mastery in future grade levels.



Thank you for visiting our blog!
Have an Incredible week!!
:) 

Number Formation Rhymes 0-10

Number Formation 
Rhymes for 0-10

0- Curve from the top; be a hero! Close the loop and make a zero!

1- Top to bottom, then you’re done. You just wrote the number 1!

2- Half a moon, there’s more to do; slide to the right, now that’s a 2!

3- Backwards C, backwards C, and that is how you make a 3!

4- Trace down the side; cross the middle for fun. Top to bottom, and you are done!

5- Trace down the side; curve like that. Back to the dot, and give it a hat!

6- Monkey’s tail needs a fix! Come on, let’s make a 6!

7- Across the sky and down like eleven; that is how we make a 7!

8- Make an S and do not stop. Go right back up, and an 8 you’ve got!

9- A hoop and a line. That’s the way we make a nine!

10- (We use the same rhyme for 1 & 0 to form 10)


Sunday, November 1, 2015

Week of November 2, 2015

Letter of the Week:  
This week we will be working on the letter Bb

Star Word:
and
The star word and the letter person worksheet will be sent home on Monday in your child's red folder.

 Skills  
Now that all letters for this unit have been introduced, we will continue to practice reading and writing these words every day. We will write the new decodable words around the room on a vertical surface, on white boards, on lined paper, with my pocket chart and with the children's individual chaining folder.

Words students should be able to read and write are: 
did, tag, tad, mad, dad, did, dim, it, at, cat, mat, dig, dog...

Centers
















Writing & Reading
We will make a Fall Star Word Tree on Monday.
During Writing Workshop we are going to practice putting words into sentences. Students will practice putting spaces in-between words and making their letters close together when they are in a word.
Look at the papers that come home from writing workshop and have your child read their sentence to you and show you their finger spaces! 
Students will also work on the writing that is already in their writing folder. They will add details to their writing by adding labels or adding words to their sentences.

For our reading we will practice reading the books in our book box. During Guided Reading I will introduce another book to students at their reading level. When we finish the book, we will complete comprehension pages that follow along with the story we just read.
As always, reading at home every night is encouraged.
Thank you!

Math  
We are almost finished with Unit 1 in Math! This week we will continue to work on 1 more and toward the end of the week we will be introduced to 1 less. Every single day we count down from 10 to 1 so this may not be very difficult for many students. Thankfully, with our math program we have fun activities that help introduce these difficult concepts. In order to teach the concept of "1 less" we will use an apple tree with 10 apples. Students will pretend to be a farmer and they will take down 1 apple at a time. As they are doing this, we will say,
"10, 1 less is 9.
9, 1 less in 8.
  8, 1 less is 7..."
We will also have a HUGE cookie tray set up with 10 cookies on it. Students will be picked to come up and "eat" the cookie off the cookie tray. As they take each cookie we will use the same language we used for the apple tree activity. Along with whole group interactive activities, we will also use our hands & dice to practice using the language of "1 less".
Do not be alarmed if your child is having difficulty, we will continue to practice using this new "1 more" and "1 less" language in class each day.
With continued practice in school and at home, all students will become confident with this new language!

 Plants 
Since we had the Halloween Parade on Friday and this week has been a very busy 4 day week, we will be wrapping up our Plant Domain on Friday of this week.
Once we finish plants, we will be learning about Farms. The first lesson will be introducing animals that are found on a farm. You may hear your child singing "Old McDonald Had a Farm" because we will be singing it all day on Friday! This song will expose all children to animals on the farm and the sounds that they make.

Vocabulary your child will be introduced to: 
crops, harvest

We do not expect students to master all of this vocabulary, but it is important that they are exposed to this language. They will now have the prior knowledge that is necessary to gain mastery in future grade levels.


Parent-Teacher Conferences
Tuesday, November 3rd
A reminder was sent home on Thursday. If you did not receive a reminder please contact me and I will send one home Monday in your child's red folder.
Thank you so much for your continued support and for coming in to meet with us!

Thank you for visiting our blog!