**WOW! Open House was spectacular! Thanks to all those who came out. It was great chatting with all of you. I was able to see some of my former students. I was particularly humbled by a visit from a former student who is now 14 years old. He shared his interests and future goals with me that included aviation and the Air Force. I was so proud of him!
**If you did not get a chance to sign up for parent conferences, I will be sending home some information on sign up next week.
**OOPS! Families, I realized that I did not include Home Links 5 and 6 in your child's homework packet. So sorry. Look for them to come home on Monday.
**Calling all volunteers!!!! Please fill out our Helpful Parents Wanted sheet. It went home today!
**Thanks to those of you who signed up for the cool class events for the year. I will be adding new opportunities to volunteer as we get further into our new reading series. Our first Station Day is October 14th.
**Route to Reading Skills Groups begin Monday, September 19th, from 9:25-9:55. The groups will meet 4 times a week. Fridays will be reserved for the students who may need additional assistance on a pull out basis with our Title One and Language Arts Specialist. You will hear much more about this at Kindergarten Curriculum Night.
**Don't Forget---Kindergarten Curriculum Night is Thursday, September 22nd from 6:30-7:30 pm in the Irving Auditorium. Adults only please. The Kindergarten Team will speak on all aspects of the curriculum. All curriculum will be on display for you to examine. There will also be a question and answer time. Hope to see you there!!!
**The students have started the LEXIA Reading Program in the computer lab. Tracy N. and Michelle M. will be my troubleshooters. Thanks so much. This individualized readiness and reading program is a great companion to our Treasures Reading and Haggerty Blue Book Exercises. The students did a great job of learning to log in and listen to the instructions. In a few weeks, I will send each family information on home access for practice.
**Mr. Packer's Math Enrichment push in will begin next Thursday from 2:00-2:30. The students will explore the world of higher level problem solving skills thru hands on activities and projects.
**Friendship Club has begun under the direction of Ms. Bell Bey. The last 2 lessons have focused on having good manners and how best to avoid distractions in the classroom in order to be the best student they can be.
**A big thank you to Tech Specialist, Ms. Applebey, for helping the students with their IPAD projects. The students learned about the basic operation and care of the IPAD. Their Doodle Buddy Projects are totally cute!!
This week:
It was all about how to manage our time and focus on the task at hand in order to complete it. The students had their first experience with working in small groups where there is another student who is the table manager. What is a manager? What are their duties? How can they assist the group? What is important? Our new reading series uses workstations as one way to differentiate learning. The teacher will also have a station.. Everyone will have a turn being a table manager.
Reading: We are almost finished with the Start Smart portion of of our reading series. Next week, we will spend some time reviewing before we dive into Unit 1. This week the students continued to work on reinforcing letters and sounds A-P. They worked on listening comprehension and retelling skills by listening to the story, "Jazz Baby." The students continued to review their sight vocabulary and learned to "Walk their Words." We had a great discussion on music and dance and how our bodies can move and how we make music. The students "read" the pictures of the wordless story, "I am Picking Apples." They were able to discuss each picture and tell the story. The students were able to create a chart about their 5 Senses. Some students wrote while others helped to tell what letters to record. The students continue to work on tracking words in a sentence, rhyming patterns, oral vocabulary and syllables in words. In our thinking story, "The Clever Turtle," the students orally retold the story. We continue to make progress in our Haggerty Blue Book.
Math: The students continue to work on number recognition and one to one correspondence. They created their own personal number boards with stickers. We worked on counting down from a random number 12 and under and the students listened and moved to our funny counting rhymes. The students continue to work on recognizing pattern block shapes. We used the "Feely Bag" where the student had to feel for certain objects by their shape. It was a very fun sensory experience. We began to explore the penny. The students took their magnifiers to take a closer look. We looked at the head side with Abraham Lincoln and learned some facts about him. We looked at the tails side and saw the Lincoln Memorial. The students learned how to tell how old a penny was. We learned to play, "Heads or Tails Tally Game" with a partner and began to explore counting by fives using the tally marks. We worked to reinforce concept words--on , over, under. Ben and Eddie made the first changes to our AGE CHANGE GRAPH!!!
Writing: We continued working in our journals using the writing prompts from our reading series. We are learning to start at the top and on the left when writing a sentence. The students are beginning to use their sight vocabulary in their sentences. I am beginning to see some inventive spelling or words written based on what a student hears at the beginning, middle or end of a word. We continue to work on our FROG JUMP letters F, E, D. In our workshop time the students used clay to show how many lines and what kind of lines were needed to create a letter.
Literature: "Oh, David," "My School is a Zoo," "The Boy Who Wouldn't Share," "Louder, Lil,"
"The Mixed Up Alphabet," "Boom Chicka Rock," "Jazz Baby," "Made From Clay," "Cliffords Family," "My ABC Signs of Animal Friends."
