Thursday, October 23, 2014

Wow, have things been busy in Kindergarten!! We have so many great things happening in 204 and I'm excited to share them with you in our newsletter!

Readers' Workshop
These past two weeks we have done all sorts of things in Workshop. We have maintained our 12 minute stamina for independent reading and have been focusing in on partner time. I'd like to announce that the "Honeymoon" phase of their partnerships have ended and there are many minor (but normal) typical arguments with partners lately. We have slowed down to focus on sitting side by side, with one book in the middle. We have spent time learning how to take turns picking a book (phew, is that exhausting) and how to take turns reading. We have also been spending a great deal of time with two different books, "Some Birthday!" by Patricia Polacco and "The Hello Goodbye Window" by Norton Juster. We picked out three words from Polacco's story: strength, familiar and investigate to be our vocab words for the week. We spent a lot of time during the week talking about the definitions of these words. From Juster's book: regular and different were our two words of focus this past week. I have been meeting with small groups of kids (2-3) daily to work on letters and sounds. Chances are, if your child was low in letter recognition and letter sounds, they have seen me! Please keep working on this at home too!

Writers' Workshop
Boy oh boy are we busy in this workshop!! We have been working on drawing pictures of a time something happened, adding labels complete with arrows and writing any letters or beginning letter sounds we can on the lines about our story. We also took a written assessment this week for Writers' Workshop. This provides me with info on where our beginning writers' are and how I can group them accordingly to work on their skills! The kids had to write a story about an animal - whether it was real or make believe. We had some pretty creative ideas and stories in our bunch! We will discuss these further at Parent-Teacher conferences on November 13!

Word Wall
These are the new words on our wall this week:and, it, play, two, you, we
These are the words that were already on the wall: a, blue, can, go, I, in, look, me, my, not, red, see, to, the, up, yellow

Math Stations
Counting, counting and more counting!! We have been working on counting up to ten and have been exploring with ten frames as we learn to add numbers that total ten! Your first Unit 1 HomeLink packet came this week. This is a "return to school" packet but on your own time. It would be safe to say, they should be back typically within a week to ten days. There are activities for you to do at home that are important to reinforce concepts we have covered or will cover soon in school! Our goal this year is by the end of April, to have all of our students writing their numbers correctly up to 100. We have been practicing our number writing during the day just like we practice our letter writing!

Halloween Update!
Halloween is going to be a very FUN day to be in Kindergarten! Information came home this week updating you on our field trip, permission slip, cost as well as parade and party! Thank you to the Moms and Grandma working hard to plan our awesome party! All are invited to come join us for the parade and party in our classroom :-).

Fun Run Update
Thank you to EVERYONE who helped donate to the Dublin Fun Run. Our school raised over $13,000 which is truly unbelievable! Thank you as well to all of the parents and grandparents who came out to cheer us on! The kids had a blast and you helped make it so much fun when we ran by and heard all the cheering and applause.

Friday, October 3rd

It has been an outstanding last two weeks to be a Weckie! I am floored daily how much these kids have learned and grown in only 23 days of Kindergarten! I have to brag and say that in our hallway, the Kindergarten kids get into the room faster than their second grade neighbors and are ready to learn! I am so proud of all of their hard work.

Friday Packets

You’ll find your child’s first Friday Packet in their green Everyday Folder today! Although there is not a lot of work in there, the work that is there is awesome! We spent time early on reviewing our colors and the first letter of each word and then we did two different practice activities for literacy stations. There are two sheets coming home in their packets featuring our six sight words for last week. We will focus on six words a week as we become more familiar with letters, words and patterns in spelling. This past week the words your child should know include: a, can, go, I, red and see. Please review these words with your child at home and spend time going over these pages in their packets. This would be a great time to start a collection of flashcards with these words! Attached to every Friday Packet is a colored note for you to sign and return back to school with your child the next week. If you have any comments, questions or concerns, feel free to write them on the half sheet of paper!

Reader’s Workshop

Our readers have already built up our reading stamina to 12 minutes! For 12 whole minutes they are quiet, in their seats, looking at books. We have many who are practicing touching the words as they go (even if they can’t read just yet), we also have many who are using the sight word books we have created in class to practice reading stories they have learned and can read. We have also spent time working with our Power Partners. Our Power Partners are our reading partners and were assigned based on abilities. We will keep these partners for the first few weeks. We have been learning how to sit side by side, how to share one book to read, how to pick the book we read and how to take turns reading. This in itself has been quite a task, and the kids are getting better and better each day!

We also completed our Brown Bear, Brown Bear project where each child made a book complete with all of the animals that they see throughout the story. We are going to keep these at school for a little while to practice reading and then they will come home. This was a HUGE task and the Weckies ROCKED!

Writer’s Workshop

We have just begun to put our thoughts down on paper in the form of pictures! A few writers have been trying to add letters and words they know to their illustrations. Now that we have spent the first three weeks doing a lot of oral story telling about things we know, it is neat to watch that transfer from oral work to written work! We will be doing a writing assessment next week that will help guide instruction on just what each child needs in writing. I have seen a lot of growth already in everyone’s letter formation and we spend time daily working on our handwriting. Soon we want to get everyone writing their name with a capital letter to start and lower case letters for the rest (now that we have everyone writing their name)!

Math Workshop

In Math we have spent time working on numbers: counting by 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s. These counting patterns can be tricky but we will get it! You can practice this at home with your child orally as they learn to do them in school. This was new for many of our kids, so expect some difficulties at home! We have also been working on calendar routines which help kids in counting. Every morning we have a Super Leader who helps with calendar, a pattern of the day and counting the days of school using base-ten blocks. We will make it through our last two kids next week and then begin all over again!

Just an important reminder, the weather has turned cold this week! We are outside every day when it is dry and the kids need warm jackets! Many kids are coming to school with just a sweatshirt and then complaining about being cold outdoors! Please watch the weather and plan accordingly!

Have a fantastic weekend…. Stay warm and of course, GO GREEN! :) Mrs. Weckstein