Weekly News May 30-June 2

I hope you all enjoyed the (mostly) beautiful weather this holiday weekend!  It is so crazy that summer is upon us!   In Kindergarten we will be spending our last days looking back on all we have learned and looking to 1st grade with excitement and pride!

Upcoming Dates and Reminders:

End of Year Dress Up Days

G 5/30 Go Team! Wear your favorite sports gear

O 5/31 Odd/crazy sock day

O 6/1 Orange Colors

D 6/2 Dads and moms (dress like your parents)

B 6/5 Backwards clothes day

Y 6/6 You’re so bright (wear sunglasses) Field Day in the afternoon

E 6/7 Extra bright clothes

Here is a peek at our week:

Reading:  This week we will enter the last bend of our character unit and will be getting ready to act out one of our favorite book club books!  We will learn that actors don't always just read the words, but also add feelings and sometimes extra thoughts and actions to help others really understand the story.  This will be such a fun way for the boys and girls to put all they have learned about reading together!

Writing: The boys and girls will be so excited to have some "free choice" writing this week!  This means we will review all of the types of writing we have done so far this year and they will get to choose their favorite and write some pieces to travel to 1st grade with them.  We will also use the checklists and charts from previous units to make our writing the best it can be.   We will also use the checklist to do some goal setting for 1st grade as we will write to our 1st grade teachers and tell them what our favorite type of writing is, what we know we do well and what we want to get better at in writing!

Math:  This week math will be all about comparing.  We will compare quantities and measurement in fun and hands on ways.  Some of the things we will be doing will be: testing capacity of various containers using dry noodles, taking "inventory" of different bags of math objects and writing our own books of measurement comparisons. 

Science:This week we will conduct official "trials" to measure the effectiveness of ramps and balls.  We will work in three different centers:

• One to observe and compare how ramp height affects the distance a ball rolls
• One to observe and compare how the size of a ball impacts the distance it can roll
• One to observe and compare how the weight of a ball impacts the distance it can roll

Weekly News May 22-26

It was a fun last FULL week together!  This week in writing we acted as coaches for the 4K writers and shared some important Kindergarten writing tips with them.  Listening to them share their tips made so me proud!

Important Dates and Reminders:
Upcoming Dates and Reminders:
May 22: Family Night
May 26: NO SCHOOL
May: 29: NO SCHOOL
May 30: Sportswear Day
May 31: Crazy/Odd Sock Day
June 1: Wear Orange
June 2: Dress Like Your Parents Day
June 5: Backwards Clothes Day
June 6: Sunglasses Day and Field Day (info coming soon)
June 7: Wear Bright Clothes/Last Day of School-11:30 Dismissal

Here is a peek at our week;

Reading: This week in reading we will work in character book clubs.  That means we will choose a book character we know well and read MANY books about that character and then meet with other students who are studying that character and share our thinking.  We will work on rereading to learn more about the character each time and will even role play with our group to act like that character.  Also we will have a chance to write a new ending for one of our character books.

Writing:  This week we will use checklist to revise and edit our writing.  We will put all of the things we have learned about composing stories, spelling and punctuation to publish our final story of our Kindergarten career.  Working with a peer editor will help us to be honest and reflective when we rereading and fixing up our writing!

Math: We will have fun reviewing ALL of the concepts we have learned across the units in math this year to prepare us to take our End of the Year Assessment in math.  The boys and girls did take this in the fall so we will be able to see how much they have grown and deepened their understand of the math concepts taught this year.  A copy will placed in their portfolio to show this growth!  We will also take time to play some of our most beloved math games that will help with our fluency!

Science: This week we will continue working in our ramp centers.  Our goal will be to collaborate with others working in the same center and to use our science vocabulary when speaking and writing  about what we are learning at each center.

Word Work:  We tried co-writing a book as a class this week.  We planned a story together and then each day we wrote a page in our own books, but worked on the spelling and editing together.  This has helped us to think more about tricky things in our writing like vowels, blend and punctuation.  Practicing all of these things will help us to be strong writers as we head to first grade.

Weekly New May 15-19

I hope you all enjoyed the  beautiful weekend!  I want to wish all of the mothers out there a very happy and blessed Mother's Day.  You are raising some pretty terrific kids that I am lucky enough to spend my days with!  You are their first and best teachers!

Upcoming Dates and Reminders:
May 22: Family Night
May 26: NO SCHOOL
May: 29: NO SCHOOL
May 30: Sportswear Day
May 31: Crazy/Odd Sock Day
June 1: Wear Orange
June 2: Dress Like Your Parents Day
June 5: Backwards Clothes Day
June 6: Sunglasses Day and Field Day (info coming soon)
June 7: Wear Bright Clothes/Last Day of School-11:30 Dismissal

Here's a peek at the week:

Reading: This week in reading we will focus on sharing the information we learn about characters with our partners.  Working to retell our stories and include character feelings will be a big portionof of our work this week. We will also learn that sometimes stories don't always come right out and say how a character is feeling and why, so we need to use what we have read to infer how a character is feeling.  This is such an important skill for young readers. 

Writing:  This week we will continue to use our mentor author, Mo Willems, to learn new writing techniques from.  Just like in reading, we will be adding in character feelings to make our story come to life.  We will also work to add dialogue by using speech bubbles. 

Math: This week we will review important concepts from Unit 5 and will take our last unit test.  We will also discuss and explore length, width, height, weight and capacity and use some hands on learning to practice these measurementy concepts.

Science: We will be exploring and observing ramps this week in science centers.  Students will work their way through a series of centers where they: watch videos of ramps and look closely at pictures of ramps and take notes on their observations, use marble works to observe a working ramp and use various materials to create their own ramps. 

Weekly News May 8-12

Welcome to another beautiful week!  This time of the year is always so bittersweet...it is a time to reflect on how much the students have learned, keeping in mind our days together are also numbered.  It makes me proud and sad at the same time!  I hope the students skip those sad feelings and only feel proud of their hard work.

Just an FYI...I will be out on Wednesday and Mrs. Flanagan will be with the boys and girls.  I will be visiting another  school to observe a possible phonics program NDLC may be interested in using in the future.  Mrs. Flanagan is so happy she will get to see the boys and girls before they move on to 1st grade!

Upcoming Dates and Reminders:
May 22: Family Night
May 26: NO SCHOOL
May: 29: NO SCHOOL
May 30: Sportswear Day
May 31: Crazy/Odd Sock Day
June 1: Wear Orange
June 2: Dress Like Your Parents Day
June 5: Backwards Clothes Day
June 6: Sunglasses Day
June 7: Wear Bright Clothes/Last Day of School-11:30 Dismissal

Here is a peek at our week:

Reading:  This week we will kick off our final reading unit of the year!   It is called "Readers Get to Know Characters By Performing Their Books." This unit will focus on reading to understand story structure and character actions. much like the emergent story book unit we did at the beginning of the year.  The big difference will now be that we can conventionally read stories and then study the characters.  This week we will use the cover, title and sequence of the story to learn more about characters and their feelings.  We will also learn to put ourselves in the character's shoes to help us better understand character feelings and how they change.

Writing:  Our true story unit is up and running and I am so happy that many of the things we worked on in Writing Bootcamp are habits the students are carrying over to their writing.  This week we will review the all of the spelling strategies we have worked on this past year:  stretching words out sound by sound, using vowels and using blends.  We will use the beloved story Knuffle Bunny to study as a mentor text.  We will look to see how the author, Mo Willems, using a beginning, setting an ending when writing a story. 

Math: Fact fluency and skill  maintenance will again be our focus in math this week.  The boys and girls have been using flashcards in the classroom to become more automatic with their +/- facts up to 5 and are challenging themselves to move away from using fingers when solving these equations.
 We will also be reviewing shapes and working on sorting equations according to whether their total is less than, equal to or greater than 10.  We will also be reviewing the concept of comparing groups of objects using those terms. 

Science:  This week we will design and make our own balls using what we have learned in this science unit so far.  Students will use a variety of materials to do this and will definitely have to do some predicting and testing to explore and discover the attributes of their creations.  We will also begin exploring ramps.  We will build background knowledge on this by searching for places around school ramps are used and also by watching videos of some common ramps.

Weekly News May 1-5

Happy May!  Did I just say that?!  I cannot believe we are entering that last full month of school!  We are sure in for lots of fun and excitement as we do all we can to get ready to become 1st graders next year!!

Just a reminder all Fang reading slips need to be turned in ASAP,  Tickets for the game will be ordered this week.

Upcoming Dates and Reminders:

May 4: Action Figures/Sci Fi Day
May 22: Family Night
May 26: No School

Reading: We took a step back this week and focused on some strong partnership skills to make sure we are not only reading to our partner but talking about our books and asking for help to solve tricky words.   This week we will jump into rereading.  Readers will learn that we reread to fix up tricky parts, make their voices sound more smooth, study characters and to even jot their thoughts about what they are reading. 

Writing:  Writing bootcamp was a success!  Each day students felt empowered to do all they could to make their writing easy to read and to make sure they were writing enough!  They also thought it was pretty funny to salute me and call me ma'am after I  gave a direction or writing tip!  This week we will begin our last unit on true story writing.  We will review the planning process for story writing be sure to tell our story first as we touch the pages of our book and then to draw and write.  We will also make the connection between our reading and writing and ask ourselves if our writing "sounds right" when we first tell the story and again when we reread it.

Math: by the end of  the year, Kindergarten students need to be fluent in solving addition and subtraction problems up to 5.  Ideally this means that are able to solve these problems without using tools, fingers or drawings.  This week we will work to ensure fluency by using and sorting flashcards and playing addition and subtraction games.   Here is a picture of an Addition Cross Out game board.  We will simply roll 2 dice and then cross out the sum.  This would be a great way to practice facts at home too!

Science: The boys and girls are SO excited about the work we are doing in science.  This week we learned the vocab words: force, gravity, compare and contrast and are working to use them as we conduct our explorations and experiments.  We will continue to compare balls this week and experiment with their bounciness by testing how various balls bounce on different surfaces and how many times they bounce.  We will also use straws to test how easy it is to move different types of balls using our own wind.
Check out these partners working hard together!

Word Work: Here is a link with helpful information about sight words. It also contains a list of 100 frequently encountered sight words. If you feel like your child has a firm grasp on our sight word list, use words from this list! Many of these words will be focused on in 1st grade.  Our goal is to make sure students are able to not only read, but write the sight words we have learned with automaticity. 

Weekly News April 24-28

Hello and welcome to a beautiful week!  It will be nice to have a full 5 days to learn and have fun with the boys and girls!

Important Dates and Reminders:
April 28: Funky Friday (dress as silly as you want)

A note from PSC:

Teacher Appreciation Week - May 1-5

Help thank our teachers for their hard work. Provide an item for lunch or snacks during Teacher Appreciation Week.  Click on this link to sign up.  Thank you for your support!

Here is a peek at our week:

Reading: This week we will continue to focus on cross checking what we read by asking: "what sounds right, looks right and makes sense."  We will learn that readers are flexible and try out many different strategies when trying to answer these questions.  We will also learn about the importance and reasons for rereading.  The big reasons we want students to reread is to make sure they are understanding what is read and to make sure their reading sounds smooth and fluent (not like a robot :)).  In the classroom we are now working on "scooping up" words in sentences and phrases rather than reading word by word.  Students may likely still read in a choppy way when decoding new words, but we can encourage them to go back and make it sound smooth.

Writing: We have now wrapped up our persuasive writing unit, which was the third and final genre of writing we will focus on this year.  We will end the year writing true stories, but before that we will have some fun with a "Writing Bootcamp."  This week students will learn that two of the things writers ALWAYS do (and make a habit of) are writing in a way others can read and write as much as they can.  Each day we will practice ways to make both of these things happen for us in a more automatic way!  We will work to hold one another accountable for doing our best work and we even set goals for ourselves by joining a "platoon" with one of these goals in mind! I am hopeful this will bring some of the important things we have learned about writing together in a fun and motivating way they will revive and strengthen our writing from now until the end of the school year!

Math: Our focus in math this week will again be on partners of number form 6-10 and reviewing partners of 5.  we will be playing a game called "Pigs in a Pen"  to help us become more automatic in recognizing partners of 10.  To play this game you need ten small objects.  One partner closes his/her eyes and the other partners takes some of the objects away and then says "Oink, oink pigs in a pen.  Tell me what is the partner of 10."   The students need to figure out how many objects are still there and then how many are missing to make a total of 10.  This can really be played with any number and is a quick and easy way to practice math at home.  We will also be working on recognizing the value of teen numbers and how they increase as they grow and we will create and compare values 1-20 to look for patterns.

Science: This week we will be doing some hands on exploration of different types of balls and how they react to human force when we bounce, push and roll them.  We will review the scientific method before conducting these movement experiments and will capture our observations through words and pictures in our science notebooks.  The boys and girls are very excited about this!

Word Work: Our focus on readable writing will flow into our word work time this week.  If you child is writing at home encourage them to make their writing readable by writing neat letters on the lines of paper and making sure the letters they are making are Add to distinguishable as upper case or lower case. 

Weekly News April 18-21

I hope you have all been enjoying this beautiful spring weather!  I know it meant lots of time for yard work and wagon rides over here!  I was reflecting over break about how little time I have left with the boys and girls and am excited to get back into the school groove and make the most of it!!

Important Dates and Reminders:

April 20: Social Studies and Subs Family Night
April 21: Wear Blue and Green for Earth Day
                Earth Day Clean up from 2:15-2:45
April 28: Funky Friday (dress as silly as you want)

A note from PSC:

Teacher Appreciation Week - May 1-5

Help thank our teachers for their hard work. Provide an item for lunch or snacks during Teacher Appreciation Week.  Click on this link to sign up.  Thank you for your support!

Here is a peek at our week:

Reading:  This week in reading we will be doing some important work of really thinking about the steps we take and places we check when solving an unknown word.  We will take a deeper look at the questions "Does it make sense?"  Does it sound right?" and "Does it look right?"  We will learn the clues we use to answer all of these questions and to even assess ourselves on which clues (picture, book/story topic or letter sounds) we use most often and which we need to rely on more.  We really want readers to be able to rely on these clues equally as they develop as readers so they have a balanced and effective approach to word solving.

Writing: This is the perfect week for us to wrap up our persuasive writing unit as Earth Day is almost here.  We will work to edit and publish a few pieces of our work on environmental issues and will be presenting them to our second grade buddies at the end of the week.  We will focus on speaking about the topics we wrote about in a persuasive way by standing tall, using a loud voice and using body gestures to really get to really get our listeners engaged.  Here is a link to a video we watched of a boy who is doing these things.  Although he is not speaking on the topics we are; the boys and girls were able to see how he used his voices and words to communicate well with others!

Math:  We are just beginning our LAST math unit of the year...holy cow!!  This unit is called Consolidation of Concepts and will focus on all of the important skills students need to attain in Kindergarten in order to have a solid grasp of mathematical concepts to build on in 1st grade.  All of these topics are repetitive and you might find me to a be a broken record when keeping you in the loop!  Please know that this is by design...our curriculum Math Expressions, is a spiral curriculum, meaning concepts are taught over and over across the year in various ways, taking students' development into consideration and giving them ample opportunity to master and deeply understand concepts! 

Science:  This week we will begin one of our most beloved science units called Balls and Ramps.  This week we will build some background knowledge and vocabulary about how and why balls move and bounce the way they do.

Word Work: Please continue to reinforce sight word automaticity in both reading and writing.  One way to practice writing is to say short sentences with multiple sight words in them and have your child write them.  When they finish have them check that their words are spelled correctly and fix up the ones that are not.  Also, challenge them to write them with all lower case letters.