**The students are becoming more familiar with the daily routines and expectations of all of their teachers and classes. Lunch is going well!. At lunch, we are reinforcing eating our main entre first, drinking our beverages and recycling the school lunch trays and milk cartons. Don't forget to send a healthy snack each day. Please put that snack in your child's backpack and not the lunchbox. Our lunchboxes are going into a big lunch bin that goes down to the lunchroom each morning. Thanks!
**Thanks for seeing that your child's HOMEWORK FOLDER is in their backpack each THURSDAY. It was lovely sharing our "Getting to Know me Heads!" Games and paper practice stories can remain home is a secure place in your home for future review. A reminder to please check HOMEWORK FOLDERS every FRIDAY for homework and other updates. Check the assignments page on my website for activities and due dates.
**The Irving Back to School Party was rained out! Bummer! We all were hoping to see each other and watch the movie. Hope you will enjoy Barrie Fest this weekend.
**COME ONE COME ALL to Irving School's OPEN HOUSE/CURRICULUM NIGHT on THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24th beginning at 6:30 pm. The schedule is as follows: I will have a PARENT ONLY curriculum overview from 6:30-7:00 pm in our classroom Room 110. You can drop your child of in the auditorium for a supervised special feature. I will be speaking about our daily routine, all subject areas, testing that is done in Kindergarten, Route to Reading skills specific groupings and special area classes. I will also have handouts with other information on our year. There will also be SIGN UP SHEETS for PARENT CONFERENCES, ROOM PARENTS and for other COOL EVENTS. Please pick up your child after the presentation and they will become your TOUR GUIDE as they bring you to meet the teachers who are working with them. I will give you a list with the teachers name, subject and room number as an assist. Hope to see everyone!
**Sign up for FAMILY MATH NIGHT! It is Thursday, October 1st from 6:00-7:30 pm. The theme this year is "There Is No Place Like Math Night--a Wizard of Oz Adventure." I will be there on the yellow brick road!!! Email me if you need another sign up flyer.
**We will have our first LIBRARY TIME with Ms. Noonan on Monday where the students can check out one book and keep it to read at home for 7 days until the next Library Time. After awhile, the students will be able to check out 2 books. Ms. Noonan will reading many types of fiction and non fiction books, helping with projects and showing students how the library is organized and where to find certain books. The students will be able to check out one book each week as long as they bring the previous book back. It is recommended that when not reading their book....students should keep it in their backpack to lessen the chances of it getting lost.
**The students had their first FRIENDSHIP CLUB meeting with Ms. Bell Bey, our social worker. She will be working with the class on a variety of lessons centering on around fostering positive peer relationships, feelings, conflict resolution, sharing, regulating their own behavior and other topics that may arise. She will use a variety of materials and approaches including stories, videos, role playing, acting, games and puppets to name a few. This week, Ms. Bell Bey gave an overview about being ready to learn and school manners.
**Last week, I began screening students with the DIBELS test and baseline letter and number recognition. In the coming week, I will be using a PHONIC SCREENER to asses basic phonemic awareness. All of these screeners take a small amount of time. These assessments will help in determining each students placement in our skills specific ROUTE TO READING groups. You will hear much more about this at CURRICULUM NIGHT.
**I had forgotten to mention that we had our first FIRE DRILL last week. We discussed how important it is to have a plan to get out of the school in case of a fire. The students did a great job of following directions. We will be having fire drills periodically throughout the year.
**The students continue to learn about the process of earning an EAGLE SLIP. This is in conjunction with our school wide PBIS behavior incentive. Everyone in our class has earned an Eagle Slip or more. Every Friday, Mr. Hodge will reach into the big container of slips and pull out 10 lucky winners.
**Information for DAISY SCOUTS is in your child's homework folder. It was a super fun experience for our girls last year! Think about signing your daughters up.
**Don't forget to check out the cool after school Eagle Extra classes out last week. Email me with any questions.
**Class and Individual Pictures will be taken on Tuesday, September 29th. More info will follow.
**Future Field Trip--Brookfield Zoo on Tuesday, November 24th from 9:00-2:00 pm. More info to follow. I will need about 5 volunteers.
This week:
It was all about the student's continued effort to feel comfortable with our daily routines and meet all of their teachers for the year. It was about ABC's everywhere! Why do we need them? What do they look like? How do they sound? What does our mouth look like when we say them? Many sounds? One sound? Uppercase? Lowercase? What happens when we put letters together? The students experienced many activities surrounding the alphabet! Station Day activities included creating a paper doll and using their sight words "I am (their name)" to complete their project, count and color to 5, building with pattern blocks and magnatiles.
Reading/Language Arts: The students are continuing to work on their prep for our Treasures Reading series using Smart Start. The students focused on letter recognition and sounds for letters A-M. They are learning about imprinting sound and how our mouth looks when we make that sound. The students used mirrors to really see what happens when a letter sound is produced. Is their mouth opened or closed? Can they feel a vibration in their throat? Can they feel any air coming out of their mouth? Lot's to think about! It is also very fun to look in your own personal mirror. The students are learning to work with me to create word webs on suggested topics--What do we do in Kindergarten? What do hands do? How do we look? These exercises generate conversation and participation that stimulate vocabulary. The students continue listen for rhyming patterns in words. They are learning to chant the ending. Our mantra or chant is for example--"Cat, Bat they end in at."
Students have begun work on sight word recognition. Words presented this week were--YES, NO, I, AM, CAN. The students read their first paper story, "I Can." They practiced finger pointing each word and mini picture. We talked about beginning at the left and reading to the right. We had a group read aloud, locating the title and page numbers. Students then practiced reading their story with a partner. The students also worked on describing the pictures in the story using a complete sentence and finding as many details as they could. In our formative text study using the story "Chrysanthemum," the students continued finding the title, front cover, back cover and spine of the book. Once again, we discussed the job of the author and illustrator. This week we talked about who is in the story (characters) and where the story happens (setting) We used the term, event to describe something that happens in the story. The students began work on a group Blueprint Workmat identifying the characters, setting and important events. Some of the students helped me to fill in the Blueprint which was projected on the board. The students will eventually complete their own individual Blueprint Workmat on selected stories. Pretty cool! The students continued to work on foundational skills using the Haggerty Blue Book. Whole group instruction aided by our reading puppet, Mr. Happy, centered on upper and lowercase recognition, counting words in sentence, isolating beginning and ending sounds and counting word parts and beginning work on syllables. Small group workstations included letter hunt, rhyming board game, sequencing ABC's, beginning sound sequence activities and Hands Up, Hands Down using their new sight words.
Math: The students continuing working in their calendar book each day. They are working on writing the correct number for the date and year, patterning exercises, forming numbers using rhymes, learning about tally marks and ten frames and recording the weather. The students also worked on a variety of small group workstations on counting and cardinality including egg carton math, "Got It," "Listen and Count," number/object match, counting to 20, using their rhymes to write numbers 1-5 and basic shape recognition. Together they worked on a project where they wrote their name...one letter in each box. The students arranged the names on the chart according to the number of letters in their name. Who had the least letters in their name? Who had the most? Ask you child!
Our Problem of the Day this week centered on positional words. Concepts, above, below, next to and under were included. The students explored pattern blocks.
Writing: The students are working on strengthening their hands and fingers by using clay. Kneading, squishing and rolling are great ways to get our fingers and hands moving. Students are also using the giant tweezers (great tripod grasp tools) to "feed" the dog and place the beads into the cups. In Writer's Workshop this week, each student created an idea light bulb and used stickers and drawings to show what they liked or are interested in. Writers write about what they know! The topics this week were friends and family. We talked about what a sentence is----it NAMES and TELLS us about something or someone. During their journal conference, I may ask them to read to me what they wrote, record on the paper what they tell me their picture is about or assist them (I will write a word, you write a word) as they talk about their pictures. During our journal time, the students are beginning to use "inventive spelling"---it could be just the beginning sound, the beginning and ending sound to spell a word. It is what they are hearing that is important. Many times, vowels are omitted. Let them spell what they hear.
Technology: We continue to work on foundational apps that are projected for the whole group. We kept to the same ones that were introduced last week. Next week, we will begin learning about personal iPad care and operation of our classroom iPads.
Literature: "Chrysathemum," "David Goes to School," "What Would the Fat Cat Sit On?" "If You Take a Mouse to School," "Mouse Loves School," "Who Will My Teacher Be This Year?" "How do Dinosaurs go To School?" "Shades of Black," "The Mixed Up Alphabet," "This is the Teacher," "I Measure Myself." (poem)
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