A peek at our week

This week we welcomed a new friend!  Meet Andrew!

We are so excited for you to be a part of our class this year!

 A look at our learning...

Fundations: this week we learned the name, sound and keyword for lowercase n and m.  Please view the parent letters attached to today's email to see ways you can help reinforce their learning at home.

Please use the following verbal prompts with your child when forming their letters:

n: down, up and over

m: down, up and over, up and over

letters & sounds we have learned

Benchmark Reading: we continue to work on responding to text.  Good readers (listeners) are able to answer questions about books they read (listen to).  This is why we are doing voice recordings daily during reading time.  There is a question posed daily for students to respond to.  This shows comprehension and listening skills.  This week we read the book The Meanies and The Meanies go to School to help with these concepts.  

Our craft today was a guided drawing of The Meanies.   Guided drawings also work on listening skills and how to follow multi-step directions.  Both very important Kindergarten skills. 

Writing: this week we learned the difference between letters, words and sentences.  We learned that you use letters to make words and use words to make sentences.  

We learned our first Word Wall Word (spelling word).  We learned the word I.  We are learning that I can be a letter or a word.  When I is by itself, it must be uppercase.  We learned how to write simple sentences with the word I.  We are learning how to put spaces between our words and end our sentences with a period.  

You may have noticed that your child wrote simple sentences with the word I and then a picture and a period. This is what they were supposed to be doing.  These are the beginning stages of writing.  If your child wanted to try and label their picture by sounding out words INDEPENDENTLY, they most certainly can and put it beside the picture, but that wasn't the expectation. If they only wrote I  and drew a picture followed by a period, that's great as well and what was taught!  You can see an example below.  This is what your child learned to do this week in regards to learning how to write sentences. 

I like the Pigeon books.  I like rainbows.  I like ice cream.

Today we were able to add I to our Word Wall.  Once a word is on our Word Wall it means children are expected to read and write it correctly at all times.  

Next week we will learn the word wall word like and learn how to incorporate it into our sentences.  

After sending home the information about the stages of writing and information on why we don't tell children how to spell every word correctly, I received several positive emails from families about how amazed they were with their child's writing this week when they took a step back from telling them everything and just encouraged them to do their best.  I am so excited for families to see and understand this.  Trust the process, it works and your child's writing skills will develop in time as it should.  Thank you for your support in this.  It is very easy to tell when a child is doing the work versus a grown up haha.  Let them shine, they will amaze you!

A good reminder

Science: we continue our unit on living and non-living.  Pebble Go is a great resource for them to explore things on this topic.  Pebble Go is an app inside the CPS portal.  They learned how to access and use this a few weeks ago.  Have them show you if they haven't already! 

This week is also Fire Safety Week.  While we didn't have time to learn about it in class like a normal year (their focus on Zoom is just gone by the afternoon when we have time to do it), I have linked a cool fire safety page to my classroom reading boards.  Have your child check it out!  We usually have a fire truck come and visit the school as well.  We couldn't make that happen this year, but I am looking into a virtual fire department visit and will keep you updated on that. Click here and go to slide 4 for the fire safety page. 

Mystery Reader: today we had our first Mystery Reader, Mr. Woods!  The kiddos received clues throughout the morning as to who it might be and made predictions based off of the clues.  He read the silly book Read to Tiger.  I linked it here and on the "read" section of our choice board.  It was a book he enjoyed reading to his children when they were this age.  

We will have another Mystery Reader on Monday morning, right after the morning announcements.  

Reminders:

*Don't forget to read to your child/have them read to you at least 4 times a week for 15 minutes each time and then record on their October reading log.

*ST math is part of our math program and every child needs to be working on it for 40-45 minutes per week.  Break times, 1:25-3:00 choice time, evenings, weekends, in the car, etc. are all great times to do this.  Please remember your child must do this independently.  You can help by asking the guided questions I sent out last week, but please do not tell them the answer.  This will make them advance when they aren't ready.