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.