Weekly Update April 18-22

This week will be a busy week with a few special events and visitors tucked in.  On Wednesday, April 20th we will celebrate Earth Day a bit early by cleaning up the neighborhood around our school.  Our kindergarten classes will be in charge of cleaning up the school grounds.  We plan to head out from 10:30-11:00.  If you would like to join us, just let us know!  We will also be welcoming some teachers visiting from Wausaukee to observe our reader's workshop in action on Wednesday and our staff developer from Columbia University in New York will be here Thursday and Friday!  

Upcoming Dates:
April 18: No School for students
April 20: Community Clean up for Earth Day (a few days early) 
April 21-22: Columbia Staff Developer
April 29: Mrs. Hixon returns
April 29 and May 3: PALs Testing

Reading: This week many of the skills we will work on in reading are helpful in building a lifelong love for reading.  We will making "reading playdates,"  which are the equivalent of a kindergarten book club.  Students will make plans in small groups how to engage with their books by acting them out, playing school, or a variety of other games like hunting for sightwords and guessing feelings.  We will learn that avid readers are always imagining what is happening in their books like a movie playing in their mind.  

Writing: This week we are launching our True Stories Unit. We will remember how important the cover of a book is. It tells a reader what is inside and how a writer can use covers to help them hang on to ideas about true story writing. We will  focus on using time words to help tell parts of the story in order. We will also be using a picture walk to get an idea of how a story will go.

Math:  This week in Math the kindergartners will relate 10-partner drawings to addition equations and find changes in the partners of ten. Students will be making a 10-partner showcase and a teen number book that will illustrate teen numbers showing ten ones and extra ones. They will also be practicing identifying the number before and after on the number parade.

Centers:

· 10 Partner Showcase 

· Teen Number Book 

· Telling a story problem to go with a given equation

· Addition Crossout Game

Science:  Last week students came up with 3 hypotheses about why some balls move and bounce more than others: the size of the ball, the material the ball is made of, and what is in the center of the ball.   This week we will begin testing those hypotheses by examining a variety of balls and their attributes and testing for similarities and differences between them, especially by weighing, rolling, and bouncing them.

Word Work:  New sight words for the next two weeks: were, now, saw, our, made.  Practice writing sight words with chalk, wood chips, in the sand box, or anything else OUTSIDE this week!

Sneak Peek into Kindergarten Reader's Workshop

Today we kicked off our newest reading unit, "Becoming Avid Readers."  Students shared all sorts of anecdotes about the avid readers in their lives and explored some pictures of various readers noting which behaviors were those of an 'avid' reader vs. the behaviors of a 'blah' reader.  Here's a sneak peek our class's avid reading habits!  It is so fun teaching and learning with your children every day!

Weekly News 11-15

We had a blast dressing up, preparing for, and participating in the Knowledge-a-thon last week.  The students were so proud after "rocking" their KAT questions!  Thanks to all the parent volunteers.  If you have pink pledge envelopes around home, you are still welcome turn them in this week!

             

         

Don't forget: For the 4th quarter, we are trying out a new school-wide reading/writing calendar for homework (yellow sheet that came home with your child last week).  Simply write the number of the activity completed on the date completed.  Please send your child's calendar with them to school on Fridays so we can share our adventures in reading/writing together!  

Upcoming Dates:
April 12: Family Night: Social Studies/Science and Subs
April 18: No School for students
April 20: Earth Day Community Clean Up (a few days early)

Reading:  Our newest unit is entitled Becoming Avid Readers and this week will focus on just that.  We will learn about what types of things avid readers do, including reading A LOT, finding places everywhere to read, keeping a stack of books-in-waiting, and really paying attention to books.  We will also learn that avid readers react to books and share those reactions with others by using post-its to mark their thinking.  As we move back into a mix of fiction and non-fiction books students will hold onto all of the things they learned as experts while also revisiting and creating their own super powers and finding specific words to describe character feelings. 

Writing: As we finish our ALL-ABOUT BOOKS Unit this week, we will make a chart of all the ways we know to show and tell information in our books. This chart will be a checklist for a book we feel is finished, but will help us think of a way to add more or different information.We will also be including introduction pages to introduce the topics of our books to our readers.  Finally, we will be acting as editors to reread through a piece over and over, each time carefully checking one thing to fix, making sure it makes sense, checking for word wall words to be spelled correctly, proper use of upper and lower case letters, and that we have periods at the end of our sentences. 

Math:  This week in Kindergarten Math, students will be writing equations to show partners of 10 and identifying an unknown partner of 10. We will be practicing counting to 100 by tens and showing teen numbers as a group of ten ones and extra ones. Students will also tell, retell, and solve addition and subtraction story problems with drawings and equations and visualize teen numbers as 10(two 5-groups) and extra ones.

Social Studies/Science:  We are excited to show off some of our All About Me work at our family night on Tuesday and give families a chance to create some of our own.  We will be starting our final content unit this week in science: Balls and Ramps!  The students are excited to move back into science and some fun hands-on experiments.  This week we will build some background knowledge and vocabulary about how and why balls move and bounce the way they do. 

Word Work:  This is the second week working on the following sight words: of, what, some, how, your  

Weekly News April 4-8

For the 4th quarter, we are trying out a new school-wide reading/writing calendar for homework.  Today your child will be bringing home a yellow sheet that lists a bunch of different options for reading and writing that they can choose from 3-5 times a week.  There is a calendar on the back of the sheet.  Simply write the number of the activity completed on the date completed and send the calendar back to school with your child on Fridays so we can share our reading/writing adventures as a class.  We will still send books home nightly to support the option of students reading from their book bags if they choose.

Additional beginning of the month information:  lunch menu, specialist newsletter, school newsletter.

Upcoming Dates:
April 4: Sports Day--to celebrate opening day for the Brewers
April 5: Pajama Day
April 6: Dress Fancy Day
April 7: Mixed-up/Backwards Day
April 8: Dress like a cat or a KAT question for our Knowledge-a-thon
April 12: Family Night: Social Studies/Science and Subs
April 18: No School for students
April 22: Earth Day

Reading:  We will finish up our non-fiction unit this week after spending a few days noticing various non-fiction text features and how they vary between texts and thinking about everything authors want us to learn from books.  We will push our partner conversations by inventing our own ways to talk about books in small groups including acting out sections, reading a section, and asking questions to keep the conversation going!  Finally we will celebrate all of this work by sharing our new expertise on our selected topics with the class.

Writing: We are continuing with our ALL-ABOUT BOOKS. We have even challenged ourselves to write a whole book in a day! We are working towards writing more about our topics, aiming for 2-3 sentences per page. Writers can also add to their books when they use pictures to teach others about the topic. Sometimes writers need help when trying to add more to their writing. We will learn how it can be helpful to work with and help a partner by asking them more questions about their topic.

Math:     This week we are starting Unit 5, MATH STORIES AND SCENES WITH TEEN NUMBERS. The focus will be on creating addition and subtraction story problems, visualizing and representing teen numbers as ten ones and extra ones, counting the number of objects in a group through 20, and creating and counting stars to make partners of 10 for a classroom display.

CENTERS:

• The partners of ten game, BUSTED
• PARTNERS OF 7,8,9; JENGA
• CONSTRUCTING TEEN NUMBERS 11-20, as a group of 10 with extra ones
• Making up STORY PROBLEMS and determining if it is (+) 0r (-)

Social Studies:  We will wrap up our All About Me unit this week by spending one more day working on our centers of iPads, timelines, collages, and book writing.  Then we will create our own class "yellow pages" of things we can help each other with at school.  Examples may include: shoe tying, animal expert, finding things, problem solving, etc.

Word Work:  New sight words for the next two weeks: of, what, some, how, your.  We have been attempting to shake up our word work practice in the classroom by practicing writing our words in paint and with play dough.  

Jump Rope for Heart

Here are some pictures from our exciting morning of Jump Rope for Heart!  We had a blast rotating through 15 different centers!

 

Mrs. Hixon surprised us with a visit! (and coffee!)

Oh...and a giant (creepy) dog surprised us for my 30th Birthday.  

Weekly News March 29-April 1

We are looking forward to welcoming back the students from spring break!  We cannot believe that this week marks the beginning of the fourth quarter!  This year has flown by so far but we will continue to pack lots of learning into this last chunk of the school year.  It was great meeting with you last week to discuss your child's progress.  As always, feel free to contact us if you have any follow-up or new questions!

Upcoming Dates:
March 31: Jump Rope for Heart
April 4: Sports Day--to celebrate opening day for the Brewers
Stay tuned for more dress-up days April 5-8th for KAT Week
April 8: Knowledge-a-thon
April 12: Family Night
April 18: No School for students
April 20: Earth Day

Reading:  As we continue reading our non-fiction texts, we will focus on how readings sometimes read everything they can about one topic.  Instead of reading a book about pigs, a book about sharks, a book about money, etc, we will start to look for texts that teach about the same topics and notice what is the same and different in the texts.  Students will learn the sometimes the pictures and the words teach similar information and sometimes the pictures and words teach two or more different things all on the same page.

Writing: Students are busy writing books on subjects they are experts on and are eager to share their passion and all that they know about a topic. They were given a Tiny Topics notebook which is a big hit with them. They are always on the lookout for good things to write about, and they can use these notebooks to jot down ideas they come across to use later.They are adding Table of Contents and rereading their books to make sure the information they taught in each page matches what they planned to teach their audience. They will be using mentor texts to notice things like boldface type, diagrams, and how-to pages that they might want to use in their own books.

Math:  This week we will continue to model and decompose teen numbers as a group of ten ones and extra ones,  and practice adding and subtracting within 10. We will also match pictures to numbers, compare groups, and identify the number that is more or less. Students will identify and describe three-dimensional shapes and describe shapes in relative positions(next to, under, above, behind, etc...) We will wrap up our week with our Unit 4 Test on Friday.   

Social Studies:  Students will work in a variety of All About Me centers this week.  Some of this work includes creating a self time-line, writing all about themselves on an app (similar to this website), creating a collage, and exploring many books.

Word Work:  With the multiple short weeks we will spend the remainder of this week focused on the same sight words: red, yellow, blue, then, was.  If you are feeling really ambitious, have your child write their sight words (use the list of all of the words so far!) and put them inside plastic eggs to have a sight word egg hunt. 

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!