Weekly News for March 14-22

With the end of the quarter, conferences, and spring break fast approaching, this weekly update will also cover our short week next week.  Next Sunday we will welcome the first official day of Spring!  Congrats to you all--we made it through another WI winter without any known casualties in the 3+times per day snow pants routine.  Please give yourself a big pat on the back, you've earned it!

Upcoming Dates:
March 14th: Culvers Night
March 17th: K-4 Field Trip to the Performing Arts Center
March 21st and 22nd: Conferences
March 22nd: Egg Crack-off ***watch for a note to come home early this week!****
March 23-28th: No School--Spring Break!
March 25: End of 3rd Quarter
March 31: Jump Rope for Heart

Reading:  We will continue to utilize expert words to learn more about our topics and teach these words to our partners.  We to ask ourselves "What might this word mean?" and search for clues in the pictures when we come across expert words we have never seen or heard before.  We will bring nonfiction texts to life by acting out the actions in the pictures and words and using gestures to add to what is happening.  Finally, we will read the words and use the pictures to soak in all the information on the page to form new learning.

Writing: The students finished our persuasive/opinion writing unit. All of their work from this unit has been sent home. You will be able to see how hard they worked to write to help make a change about problems they see in the world and exactly how they feel about these problems! On Monday, we will start our All-About-Books Unit. During this unit of study students will write lots of information books about different topics. Students will channel their passions and areas of expertise to share everything they know about these topics.

Math:      Over the next week and a half the kindergarteners will continue to write partner equations and practice addition within 10 and solve subtraction within 6-10. They will also be using partners 1-5 to practice writing and illustrating story problems for both addition and subtraction equations and writing and drawing teen numbers. They will be introduced to the attributes of cylinders(solid, roll, have a circle on both ends) and cones(solid, rolls in a circle, has a flat, circle side and a point on the opposite end).
Centers:

• Use toys to "act out" story and draw a picture and write an equation to represent story
• Make own partners of 10 chart using 10 strips and break-apart sticks to model
• making small books by drawing a picture and writing an equation from cards chosen
• practicing math facts with Math Bug Game on IPAD

Social Studies:  We are starting our All About Me study for a few weeks in social studies.  This week we will read a book, watch a video, write a class book, and learn a song all about how special and unique each one of us is.  

Word Work:  Our new sight words for the next two weeks are: red, yellow, blue, then, was
I have been checking students' sight word knowledge and will share their awesome progress with you at conferences next week!