Fire Prevention Week

A look at our learning this week...

Fire Prevention Week: today the firefighters from Station 3 visited Kindergarten.  Their truck has "Mater" from the movie Cars on it!  Look for it throughout town!  

They wanted the kiddos to go home and talk with their families about 4 important things:

1) Plan your escape-every home needs an escape plan that all members know about

2) Walk through your house as a family and discuss 2 ways out of every room in case of a fire

3) Discuss and show your children where your outside meeting place is in case of a fire.  It needs to be far away from your house (mailbox, neighbors, etc.)

4) Call 911

Fundations:  we learned lowercase e and r. 

Please use the following verbal prompts:

e: across, over, around, open

r: down, up and curve

Shared Reading: our new spelling word this week was at.  We read the big book Look at me to help us practice this word.  We are also working on pointing to words when we read and having one to one match with the words we know (am, at, I, a).  

Daily 5: we have two new stations at our Daily 5 workstations: cut & paste and book boxes.  Ask your child what stations they went to at Daily 5 this week.  

Writing Workshop: it is so exciting to see more and more friends trying to add labels to their stories.  Please encourage your child to add labels/words to their stories/drawings at home.  At this point in the school year it is OK if they are only able to hear and write down beginning and ending sounds.  We do not expect, nor or they capable of correct spelling at this point in the school year, unless it is a word wall word (at, am, I, a).  

If they ask you how to spell a word, please don't spell everything for them.  They won't learn this way.  Ask them to sound it out and write the sounds they hear.  Phonetic spelling is more than OK and is what we want at this point of their development.

Math: this week we worked on counting backwards and more sorting.  It was fun to sort coins!

Social Skills: we have been in school for 38 days, hard to believe!  We have worked hard these past 38 days building a community of learners in our classroom.  While there are many things this class is wonderful at, there are a few areas that we struggle with.  

The three biggest concerns and areas we are working on are:

1) treating our specialists teachers with respect

2) being in control of our hands and bodies

3) playing with toys and using our school materials in a kind, safe and appropriate ways

As the weeks have gone on and I see these areas getting worse, rather than better, I feel it is important to implement more ways to help them learn and be successful in these areas.  Over the next few weeks we will be having a social skills lesson every day.  This means we will have to shorten some of our academic learning to fit this in.  I wouldn't do this if I didn't feel it was truly important.  Sadly, some of our behavior choices are taking away from our learning.  In order to learn in the best environment possible, we need to strengthen our weak areas.  

We actually started today and will continue with the theme of "my hands are not for hurting" through the end of next week.  This class can be very rough.  I see it some in my classroom, but in more sneaky ways: poking our friends backs in line, sliding our hands out of our lap while at the carpet and poking the friend in front of us or pulling their hair, slowly uncrossing our legs to kick the person in front of us, etc.  In specials it is not rare that I get a report that the class was running around, chasing, tagging, "hugging" (squeezing tightly), pushing and shoving when they should have been doing art or singing or exercising.  At recess, they are very rough: tackling, throwing each other down in the mulch, pushing.  While most of the time they are laughing, it is not okay.  Our hands are not for hurting.  We have wonderful play equipment to play on and they don't need to be playing these other rough games.  

We had a long talk today about how much I love them and love my class this year and it makes me so sad to hear from other teachers how they are behaving when they aren't with me. I wish I could say it was just a few children, but it is usually reported as most of the class.  Our counselors and principals have had to step in and assist in specials many times due to their behavior.  I told them I want the other teachers to see how wonderful they can be, just like I do.  I do have strict and firm discipline and they seem to thrive off of that.  However, we have amazing specialists as well.  We all handle situations and behaviors differently  It is important we teach the students to be adaptable.  Not everyone will teach the same or do things the same way and that is okay.  It is important they are respectful and responsible in all classrooms and not just in mine.  

A good example is from today.  We read the book Hands Are Not For Hitting and did an activity where we showed a good way to use our hands.  We traced a friends hands and will display our helping hands in our room all year.  This will be a reminder to always use safe hands.  We had a long and what I thought was a very good talk about how to have safe hands and bodies.  Sadly, as soon as we were finished it was time for music.  I bragged to Mrs. Haley about how we know so much about having safe hands and bodies.  I told her that I knew they would do awesome today!  Sadly, she had to call the office for help again.  Many friends were pushing, shoving, grabbing, out of their spots and refusing to follow her directions.  She had to put many friends in safe seats and that resulted in walking tickets at play time.  I was shocked and so sad when I picked them up to hear this news.  Especially since we spent so long right before talking about it.  I want to be able to trust them when they aren't with me.  

Please know I wouldn't be writing this long post if it was just specific children.  It does seem to be many in the class and I thought as a team (teachers and parents) we could work together to teach correct behaviors.  I want my kiddos to excel in all ways.  They are little people, but they are also very capable of knowing the difference between right and wrong because they show me in my classroom.  I know that I have communicated with many of you about this issue privately, but wanted to also let everyone know what we would be working on as a whole class the next couple of weeks.  These types of social skills lessons are good for all kiddos, even the ones who always make good choices as it reiterates the good things they are doing.

My motto this year has been "make a good choice because it's the right thing to do and not just because someone is watching." 

Thank you in advance for talking through this blog post with your child.  Any support you can give at home is greatly appreciated.