Hello K Families!
Last week we learned about and practiced many safety drills
at school. These conversations of course sparked many questions about
emergencies and being prepared. With all of this fresh in your child's
mind, this might be a great time to review safety plans in your own home!
This week will be another exciting week as we welcome our staff developer,
Brianna Parlitsis, from Columbia University. She will be planning with
and coaching all of our teachers in reading and writing, along with leading lab
sites in classrooms. With her visit, each class will have a "guest
teacher" for a 2 hours Wednesday-Friday while the classroom teachers work
with Brianna. You may notice our guest teacher pick the students up
outside in the morning, since Brianna will be working with 4K-1st grade
teachers right away.
Upcoming Important Dates:
Tuesday, September 22: No School for Students
Thursday, September 24: Family Night: Hot Dogs and How to
Help
One change in upcoming events: Math Morning has been
moved from October 9th to October 16th.
Our math consultant from Butler University in Indiana, Ryan Flessner,
will be at New Directions on October 15th and 16th
working with students and teachers. Ryan is eager to also meet with New
Directions families on the morning of October 16th to share
some wonderful math knowledge.
***To help us be prepared for field trips and opportunities
to volunteer in the classroom later this year, please let us know if you need a
background check form. Background checks take 2-3 weeks to be verified
and are required every 5 years.***
Reading: It was very exciting to move into
"reading" old favorite storybooks this week. Please continue
reading...and reading...and reading...the storybook your child brought home
last Thursday to help them turn it into an old favorite that they can
"read" by telling the story themselves. These books can be sent
back to school with your child on Wednesday. Students will have a chance
to share their new old favorite story with their reading partner later this
week. We are continuing our work in storybooks in the classroom as well,
trying to say even more on every page to make our words match the text and
connecting pages to make our reading sound even more grown up by using phrases
like "and then" and "after that."
Writing: This week in writing we continue
working hard to make our teaching books the best they can be. We will
even use a writing checklist to see where we can add to our books…I know the
boys and girls will feel so grown up doing this. Later this week we will
be learning to write true stories! This means we will be taking an event from
our lives, telling that story and then working to show it in pictures and words
across three pages. We will practice this work as a class be writing a
few class “true stories” together.
Math: In math this week our focus will shift
from showing number quantity to comparing number quantity. We will learn
about a new math tool called a comparing mat that will help us to distinguish
numbers as greater than and less than. We will also be exploring and
classifying shapes. This week we will focus on the characteristics of
circles, squares and rectangles. Our math centers will be: using a
comparing mat with tiles to observe number size, creating our own counting
books, sorting shapes and using tiles to begin some work with adding.
Social Studies: Now that we are settling into the
normal routines of school and have built the foundation for our classroom
community, we will be kicking off our first social studies unit. This
unit is a School Study. This week we will build some background on our
school study and list all the different jobs that people in our school
do. We will formulate interview questions and do a practice interview on
Mrs. Hixon and I. In the coming weeks we will take many tours and conduct
interviews of these people to learn all about our school.
Please follow New Directions Learning Community on our
social media sites!
Facebook: follow us at NDLC Charter School
Twitter: follow us @NDLCCharter and @ndlcroom80
Instagram-follow us @ndlccharter
Here are our school and specialist newsletters!
Have a great week!!
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