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.