Weekly News October 5-9

We had a terrific week in Kindergarten last week!  The highlight was most definitely celebrating the end of our first reading unit with a parade!  In case you didn't catch the video on Facebook, here it is one more time!

New Directions students are invited to march in the homecoming parade this Friday.  All students MUST have a parent march with them.  Please return a permission slip to school with your child if you plan to join in the parade!

Now that the kids have settled so nicely into a routine, we would like to welcome any interested volunteers into our classroom.  Please send us an email if you are interested in helping in the classroom and include the frequency, days and times you would be available to help.  All volunteers are required to have a background check on file, please contact us if you need a background check form sent home with your child.  

Just an FYI, Mrs. Hixon will be out of state for a wedding this Thursday and Friday.  Mrs. Flanagan will be here in her place, she is a beloved substitute at New Directions and we know the students will love learning with her!  

Upcoming Dates:
Friday, Oct. 9th:  Orange and Black and Crazy Hair day and  Homecoming Parade-5:00 pm

Friday, Oct. 16th: Math Morning 7:30-8:15 am

Tuesday, Oct. 20th: Family Night 4:30-5:30 pm

Thursday, Oct. 22 and Friday, Oct. 23: No School for Students

Oct. 26-30th: Red Ribbon Week
Tuesday, Oct. 27th: Field Trip to Heckrodt and Kaukauna Fire Dept 

Our October Homework Calendar will be coming home with your child on Monday.  Later this month/early November your child will also begin to bring an independent reading book home as well.  Our goal is for this homework to authentically reinforce math and literacy concepts at home while also being realistic and manageable for our young learners and their families.

Reading: As you can see from the video, we wrapped up our first reading unit in a BIG way! The students were just beaming as they proudly celebrated their skills with the rest of the school cheering them on!  Our 2nd reading unit will continue to focus on reading emergent story books but will delve deeper into focusing on character feelings and actions.  Students will also start to build comfort with conventionally reading familiar texts that they know well--like their Star Name books, songs, and rhymes we been reading regularly in class together.

Writing: This week will be another exciting week as we will be wrapping up and celebrating our first writing unit.  To celebrate we will be reading our true stories to the class and then displaying them on a special bulletin for the whole school to admire.  In order to get ready for this celebration we will be using a checklist to help us revise our writing make sure our stories are the best they can be.  We will also learn how to edit our writing to make sure it is easy for others to read.  The next unit we will jump into is called "Observing, Labeling and Listing Like Scientists."  We will be doing some observing and collecting of fall artifacts to help us to do this work, then our goal will be to write teaching books about the things we see and collect.  

Word Study:  We will begin learning some sight words this week.  We will focus on 5 new sight words every two weeks.  Our words for the next two weeks are: I, a, the, is, and
Keep an eye out for these words in books you read together at home!

Math: We will continue to work on number order this week and will also begin to use math tools to show both addition and subtraction.  We will be looking at pictures and determining if the objects in them are joining together (showing addition) or being taken apart (showing subtraction).  Our math centers this week are: practicing number order by completing dot to dot pages and constructing numbers with play dough, using pictures to tell addition and subtraction problems, creating our own number parader showing numbers and their quantity in order and using multiple materials to build shapes.  

Social Studies: We will conduct a few more interviews of school staff this week as part of our school study.  So far we have interviewed Mrs. Frischmann (principal), Mrs. Wydeven (guidance counselor), Mrs. Mitchell (admin assistant), and Mrs. Hixon (about her reading specialist role).  This week we will interview Mr. Tom (custodian), Mrs. VandeHey (math coach), and Mrs. Geoffrey (heath office EA).