**Open House was spectacular! The students had so much fun being your tour guides! I enjoyed seeing all the families! The students are still chatting about the cool Doodle Buddy slideshow! Many of you signed up for a Conference Time. If you did not have a chance...don't worry, I will sending out a formal letter. Parent/Teacher Conferences for my class will be held on Tuesday, October 16th, Wednesday, October 17th, Thursday, October 18th and Friday, October 19th in our classroom. At that time, I will be sharing any assessments, student progress in all academic areas, participation and social/emotional reflections.
**Our class has earned enough EAGLE WINGS and have voted to have a PAJAMA PARTY on WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19th. The students can come in their pajamas or bring them to change into. They may also bring a bedtime stuff animal if they choose. Fluffy slippers can be worn in the classroom only so send gym shoes to change into.
**MILLION MINUTES READING CHALLENGE is beginning soon in October! Your child will get a recording log each week and we are asking that each child read/be read to for 20 minutes each day. I am looking for a volunteer who would be willing to collect our weekly reading logs and record the number of minutes on a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet will be provided for you. It is a School Wide goal to read 1,000,000 minutes by April. We can do it!! We need your help. Email me if interested.
**PICTURE DAY is Tuesday, October 2nd. I try to book an early slot. Thanks to M. Schwager and L. Pointer for their assistance. Stay tuned for more info.
**KINDERGARTEN CURRICULUM NIGHT is this coming Thursday, September 20th from 6:30-7:30 pm. (half hour later then previously mentioned) in the Irving Auditorium. This adult only event will provide you will absolutely everything you need to know about the tools used to educate your child. Hope to see you there. Please bring any questions you may have.
**I am in the last week of assessing students using the PHONIC SCREENERS. We will be discussing their use in creating our skill specific groups for Route to Reading at curriculum night.
**Don't forget--Library books can remain out 1 week and then must be brought back so your child can choose new ones. This week, Ms. Noonan spoke to the students about books being FICTION and NON-FICTION. Each child selected a fiction and non-fiction book.
**Ms. Bell Bey began Friendship Club today. She spoke about the topics that the students will be working on and introduced the students to her puppet friends. A note about her goals is in your child's folder.
**Mr. Packer will absolutely begin Math Enrichment next Tuesday. He was out of the building on Tuesday afternoon at a meeting.
**Students received their usernames and passwords for the at home program, READING EGGS today. They can click on the reading eggs name at the side of the blog. If they are reading and have a reading vocabulary of 50 words then they can click top selection. Most of my students will be clicking the bottom selection that will review letters and letter sounds. Experiment with it. This is just another option for practice. Parents set the amount of time and number of days. I can check in remotely through my computer.
**Travel Journals were shared by Kanohi (Eagle, Wisconsin) and Emerson (St. Louis, Missouri.) The students love locating the places on the our giant map and noting the distance between destinations.
**We will have a student assembly for the FUN RUN PTO Fundraiser on Monday, September 17th. Families will get the information sent home that day. Stay tuned for more info!
**Our 24th student will start class on Monday. Our class is now closed!
This week:
It was all about getting ready for open house. The students worked hard on projects to be displayed on our hallway wall. They thought about the future in their writing and illustrations of what they wanted to be when they grew up. They worked cooperatively with a partner on their border patterns and worked independently to create their pattern block design. What masterpieces!!! The most fun of all was working on their Doodle Buddy Project and seeing it in slideshow form. They are recognizing their classmates names and chatting with them about the stickers and drawings each used to personalize their photo. The students had such a great time playing 'Heads or Tails," that I postponed their Station Day activities until next Friday! More about that in the Math section!
Reading/Social Studies: The students finished week 3 of our prep for Treasures Reading Series called Start Smart. The students worked on letter names A-Z and letter sounds for letters A-P. They used their mirrors to observe where each letter sound came from....open/closed mouth?.....puff of air.....vibrations?...where is your tongue? The students continued work on on their sight vocabulary. We did some work with naming the letters (spelling) each word. In our interactive read aloud story, the students listened to a folktale from South America. They located the continent of South America on our world map. In the folktale, "The Clever Turtle," a man wants to make turtle soup. The turtle is very clever. The class discussed what that meant. (smart) The turtle plays the flute. The students recognized that this story was fiction. The students talked about what makes the turtle clever. (He does not become turtle soup!) and also thought about what the lesson might be in the story. Once again, the students created a picture in their mind as the story was being read. The students reviewed the trade book, "Jazz Baby." They used the retelling cards to tell the story. Students volunteered to write a sentence under each card. I said the letters and students recorded them. Some student volunteers knew how to spell and wrote the words on their own. The students compared the fiction story, "Jazz Baby," to the informational (non-fiction) story, "Made From Clay." They noted the real from the make believe, photos vs. illustrations and what each story was about (making music vs. clay.) The position words, under, on, in and over were reviewed. During our read aloud time, students re-read their paper story, "I Can." They concentrated on finger pointing each word and picture and noting that each sentence begins with a capital letter and has an ending mark at the end. Students took turns reading aloud while the other students followed along with their finger. Our workstations this week included "Froggy, Froggy, Where's your Home," (upper/lowercase match) Sound Toy Bag Game, "Broken Egg" letter match, "Go Fish" for letters and iPad apps My ABC's, ABC Touch and Sound Sort. The students continue to work on Haggerty Blue Book exercises which include, letter recognition and sounds, rhyming, segmenting, substituting sounds, deleting sounds, adding sounds and counting syllables.
Math: The students continued their study of pattern block shapes. They reviewed the name of each shape. They students experimented with shape, design and visual perception. Each student created a design all their own. Marvelous! The students worked on counting quantities and counting down and counting on from a random number (0-25.) We discussed the terms greater than and less than. The students reviewed naming and finding basic shapes throughout the classroom. The students explored the penny and what it is worth. We took a look at the "Head" side--Abraham Lincoln and the "Tail" side--the Lincoln Memorial building. The students were introduced to tally marks which is a way of counting by 5's. The students played the game, "Heads or Tails" with a partner. It is in their homework folder.
Writing: Now that the students are aware that different types of lines form our letters, they began work on formal letter formation. In our Handwriting Without Tears series, students learn to form the letters using rhymes and cues. They have begun work on the FROG JUMP CAPITALS. Letters F, E and D were introduced. We used our wooden pieces to form the letters and worked on our mini boards with 'baby" chalk and "baby" sponges. Students are reinforcing their tripod grasp using these tools. The students located "Mr. Smiley" on their mini board to help guide them to start at the top left. An example--for letter F---starting up at the top----straight line down.....Frog Jump UP...(lift hand back to the top)...straight line across....(go to the center)....straight line across. The students continue using the writing prompts from our Treasures series. We continue to work on what a sentence is (NAMES and TELLS), beginning with a capital letter, putting a space between every word and seeing if we can write our words by recording the first and last sound we hear and even recording any middle sounds we hear (inventive spelling.)
Technology: The students continue to use the iPad apps My ABC's, ABC Touch and Sound Sort for as a tool to strengthen upper/lowercase recognition, sound/letter imprinting and language development during our reading/language arts times. The iPad app Intro to Math, was introduced this week to enhance number recognition and sequence. The activities contained in this app include musical counting sequence, sequencing number order, number tracing and recognition, touching number and number scatter.
Literature: "Countdown to Kindergarten," "Alphabet Rescue," "My Friends," "Words Are Not For Hurting," "What Will the Fat Cat Sit On?" "Me I Am," "Good Boy, Fergus," "New Bear at School," "No, No and No"-no, no, y no (English/Spanish,) "Leo, the Late Bloomer."
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