A look at our learning...
Fundations: over the next couple of weeks we will quickly review how to form all uppercase letters. It is a review, rather than explicit teaching, as we expect Kindergarteners to come into Kindergarten already knowing how to write their uppercase letters. We will review two letters a day until completed. This week we practiced uppercase A-H.
The Fundations parent packet is quite large this week. I strongly encourage you to begin doing the activities at home throughout the week, if you haven't already, specifically the "tapping out" words practice that will now be included each week. This will GREATLY help your child in their reading and writing skills at school. Now that it is the second part of the school year, academics and expectations are really increasing. When you reinforce their learning from school at home, it helps them become more successful in the classroom setting.
The more confident they become with tapping out words, the easier it will be for them to write stories/sentences and read age appropriate books.
Now that we are reviewing uppercase letters, their optional weekend handwriting "homework" looks a bit different. The picture below is what you will see coming home for the time being.
Shared Reading: this week we read the Big Books For Mom and I love the Earth. We also read the poem "Love is..."
I mention "Shared Reading" every week, so you may be wondering what it is. "Shared Reading is an interactive reading experience that occurs when students join in or share the reading of a book or text while guided and supported by the teacher. The teacher explicitly models the skills of proficient readers, including reading with fluency and expression." (source: Reading Rockets)
A big book is an enlarged book that all students can see. We work on the same 1 or 2 big books (or poems) all week and once the students are "experts" at reading the book, they get a smaller copy to keep in their book box to read independently.
In the pictures below, students are highlighting word wall words in their smaller copies of our big book mentioned above.
Next week's spelling words:
yes
no
Words will be introduced on Tuesday, due to no school on Monday, and test on Friday.
Writing Workshop: this week we began using new writing paper with more lines and is two sided! The lines are Fundations lines, rather than the single line paper we had been using. This is a natural progression now that we have learned how to correctly form all letters in Fundations and their gross motor skills are developing and ready for a more traditional style of writing paper. This new paper will also help to reinforce forming their letters correctly at all times, not just during explicit practice in Fundations.
We are also working on adding more detail to our stories. We have learned about the Story Hand.
Here is a quick explanation of the Story Hand:
1. Heart-choose a topic that is close to your heart (then it is easier to add more detail)
2. Characters (girl and pig)-tell who is in your story
3. Setting (barn)-where your story takes place. For example: "I went to Target with my mom." This includes who is in the story and where it took place.
4. 3 details (1, 2, 3)-we are moving beyond one sentence. For example: "I went to Target with my mom. I got a new Lego set and my mom got food and we got a hot chocolate"
Adding more detail is something that will take some time and we will work on for quite awhile.
Math: we focused on shapes, teen numbers and various ways to make 10 this week. Please refer to the handouts in your child's Friday Folder for ways to extend their learning at home.
Social Studies: we learned about taxes (in a broad sense) to continue our learning about Government and Cultures & Symbols. We also spent time each day learning about Martin Luther King, Jr. through books, videos and conversations. Here is one of videos we watched.
Friday Craft: our craft tied in with our learning about Martin Luther King Jr. We learned that he was a kind man who helped change unfair and unkind laws. Check out the beautiful craft we made!
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