Weekly Update for April 25-29

Whew!  After a busy week and many schedule changes last week, we are looking forward to a normal week in Kindergarten!  Of course the thing we are looking forward to even more than that is welcoming Mrs. Hixon back this Friday!  We cannot believe that this is the last week of April...meaning May and the end of the year are right around the corner.  We will start the PALS (Phonological Awareness Literacy Screener) assessment on Friday as well and will finish next week Tuesday.  

Upcoming Dates:
April 29: Mrs. Hixon returns
April 29 and May 3: PALS Testing

May 12: Family Night

May 23: Family Event at the Kaukauna Public Library

May 26: 1/2 Day--Dismissal at 11:30

May 27 and 30: No School

June 1: Field Day--Stay tuned for more info, but if you are thinking about volunteering and will need a background check, please let us know ASAP!  Thanks!

June 2: Last Day of School--1/2 Day for Students

Reading: Our current reading unit focuses on many types of texts.  The last two weeks have focused on fiction texts, the next week or so we will switch back to nonfiction, and then wrap up this unit by falling in love with poetry.  Students have been having a BLAST in their reading playdates, which have taken the place of our partnership time for this units.  A personal favorite is when students choose to "play school" and are reading aloud to each other, pretending to be the teacher and inviting their peers to 'turn and talk' about various things in the text!  We will learn that we can also have reading playdates with nonfiction book and perhaps even decide to become a group of experts on one topic.  

Writing: Students will be learning that authors are always re-reading their writing and asking themselves if it looks right, sounds right and makes sense.  Just like we use strategies in reading for tricky words, we can also use strategies in writing for tricky words. Things like stretching the word's letters, checking our alphabet chart if we need to, making sure every word has at least one vowel, and listening for letters that work together to make their own sound…these are called blends. Finally, we will talk about how writers get ideas for their stories from other writers. We will do this is by studying how an author starts a story and trying that out in our own story.

Math: This week students will practice equalizing groups by adding and finding partners of 7, 8, and 9. Number activities will include showing numbers 1-20 and teen numbers as groups of ten ones and further ones, finding the unknown partner when the total and one partner are known, and finding the total of two partners. We will also be reviewing 2D shapes and comparing story problems with more and less.

Science:  We will continue to compare balls this week and experiment with their bounciness by testing how various balls bounce on different surfaces and how many times they bounce.  We will also use straws to test how easy it is to move different types of balls using our own wind.

Word Work:  We are continuing to focus on these sight words: were, now, saw, our, made.  One of our new favorite word work games is getting a cup with magnetic letters in it that will spell one of the sightwords.  Students must figure out what word it will spell and of course spell it.  You could recreate this at home with magnetic letters or by simply having your child write sightwords on slips of paper and cutting apart the letters.