Friday, March 11th

It’s been another awesome week in Room 301! We are in the midst of many different projects and there is a noticeable buzz every time “Book Publishing” or “Gardening” is mentioned.

Language Arts

In Reader’s Workshop this week we added a new book to our list of little books, one centering around Dalmatians after our 101 day celebration. Reading Groups met Monday-Thursday… Mrs. Weckstein was home sick on Friday (an honest bummer for me). Thank you to everyone who is returning their Guided Reading books in a timely manner – it has helped our groups to meet and move very smoothly. I am very excited to see such energy and enthusiasm surrounding our abilities to read different books.

In Writer’s Workshop we chose one of our Small Moment pieces to publish this week! Each child was given their own book to write and illustrate their favorite story in and then share. Please look for these to come home at the beginning of next week with an attached note. We spent a great deal of time on these books and the kids are VERY excited to read them to our class before they bring them home to share with their families.

We also spent time this week writing to a topic. While it may seem like a LONG, LONG, LONG way off, there will come a day when this group of kids will take the MEAP tests (3^rd grade really is still a long way away) and on the test they will need to be able to write to a topic. Building wide we hold “Topic Tuesday’s” once a month and this month the topic was kindness. We spent a great deal of time talking first about kindness and read the book, The Splendid Friend Indeed. We used this Mentor Text to brainstorm ways people have been kind to us. Then each child was given a paper with a square for an illustration to illustrate a time someone was kind to them and then they had to write a couple of sentences. I was VERY impressed with how well our writers’ did on this task for their first attempt!

Our Word Study this week has been HUGE in connecting our Reading and Writing together. We have spent time breaking words into onsets and rimes.  Onsets are the beginning sounds and rimes are the ending sounds. For instance, if the word was “brown” we would say the onset was “br-“ and the rime was “-own”. By breaking words apart this way we are helping ourselves to write the sound we hear in words more accurately as well as teaching us ways to break tricky words apart when we are reading and come across an unfamiliar word. I will be sending out a “sight words” list next week that will give you more words you can practice at home that we have been using in many different ways at school.

Math

This week in Math we did a few different things! We practiced counting by ones, fives and tens by using our hands (THANK YOU for your speedy response in returning the homework) and then we practiced counting using base-ten blocks.  Additionally one of our stations this week was a math game where students had to use a spinner to spin a number ranging from 11-20. Students then had to use different counters to make the number on a ten frame. This helped to reinforce the concept that any number in the teens is simply 10 +  ___ .

Social Studies

This week in Social Studies we talked about the differences amongst people (physical characteristics, cultural backgrounds and even ages). The Weckies were partnered up randomly and had to complete an interview with each other comparing: eye color, height, favorite food, favorite holiday, length of hair, hair color, boy/girl and more! It was fun for the kids to share their findings with the whole group and see that we are alike in many ways and also very different in many ways. We talked about why it is good to be different!

Science

AND… this week in Science we became gardeners! After spending time with a poem that describes “sowing seeds” we planted our own seeds. Each child had the chance at stations this week to plant their own flowers – daisies or lavender. Please keep your fingers crossed that they grow! (wink wink)

Important Upcoming Info…

Next week brings an exciting week upon Dublin Elementary with the celebration of St. Patrick’s Day! Starting today, leprechauns visited Room 301 and left a gold coin in your child’s book drawer J! Over the course of next week the leprechauns will play tricks on us and of course, leave us fun treats. Feel free to play along at home, the kids are really excited and curious about these new visitors. On Thursday, March 17^th there will be a school-wide “Wear Green” motto sponsored by Dublin’s Student Council. If you are able to donate a quarter to wear green, the kids of Student Council with Mrs. Entwistle (our Media Specialist) are collecting money to help buy a brick and donate to the Foster Farm House (http://www.walledlake.com/FosterFarmhouse/fosterindex.htm) in Walled Lake.

Additionally, next week I will be out of school on Thursday and Friday. I was fortunate to participate in a program called MI-Champions this year and the lessons that I developed for our Morning Calendar Routine on the Smart Board were actually part of this program. As a result of my participation, we are required to attend the MACUL (Technology Conference) Conference on the 17^th and 18^th at Cobo Hall. I am thrilled for this opportunity to learn more from the classes about incorporating technology into our classroom. I am heavy-hearted to be missing one of the most FUN days at Dublin (St. Patrick’s Day). To guarantee a FANTASTIC day in 301, Jill Jones, retired Dublin teacher extraordinaire, will be our Guest Teacher both days. I will leave detailed plans for more surprises from the leprechauns and other fun St. Patrick’s Day festivities!

Have a fantastic weekend and give your little Weckie a big hug from me!  :-) Mrs. Weckstein

Next Week's Snack Leaders are: Monday: Hannah; Tuesday: Robby; Wednesday: Nick; Thursday: Carly; Friday: Ava :-)

Friday, March 4th!

Personalize a scrapbooking design

We’ve made it to 102 days of Kindergarten!!! It was hard to believe this week that we met with the future Kindergarten parents (Tuesday night was Kindergarten Orientation) while Wednesday and Thursday we celebrated 100 and 101 days of Kindergarten! This was a fantastic week to be a part of Room 301.

On Monday we got back into the routine of being at school and in Kindergarten! (This took us a few reminders). On Wednesday we welcomed two VERY special guests to our classroom Sandy Richards George, Executive Director of the Foundation for Excellence, came to see how the $3750 in grant money has been used with the SmartBoard and related accessories! This was a pretty powerful morning for Sandy as well as for our Kinderkids. Sandy was able to see our morning routine (calendar, checking the weather, making patterns, counting the days with base-10 blocks and even how we can read books on the Smartboard) and watch how independent the kids are when working on the board in different parts of the day. Nathan Hartwick, district Videographer, was also present capturing every moment on film to show WL District parents and donors. To say thank you, we made a short video that I am working to get on the blog for you to see. This video will be featured on the Foundation for Excellence’s Webpage in the next few weeks! Talking with Sandy and showing her how much we love our Smartboard it became increasingly evident how dedicated Sandy and the Board of Trustees for the FFE are in getting technology into our classrooms. Let’s face it, the district is looking at a possible budget cut next year of over $20 million dollars. In a time where our state is not stable, it is pretty unique and special to have a foundation in the district that is able to help support our students. If you would like to help support the FFE please let me know or visit www.foundation4excellence.com.

Once our FFE visitors departed we had an active day celebrating 100 days of school with a snack that was made up of five different foods, counted by your child up to 100 pieces. We read stories like The 100th Day Worries and we counted up to 100 multiple times! Wednesday was also Dr. Seuss’ birthday and we celebrated this by reading lots of Seuss books, writing about our favorite book and telling why in stations. Several of our Workstations this week were centered around Dr. Seuss or the 100th Day of School.

On Thursday this week we celebrated the 101th day with a celebration in the Old Gym. You can click on the photo scrapbook above to see everyone in their “puppy” outfits, handmade by your very own child, I mean puppy dog! We had all sorts of stations ranging from crafts, to math, to reading, to snacks and games. A special thank you to all of the parents that helped to prepare the stations as well as work the stations on Thursday. A special thank you to parents who sent in donations of snacks, juiceboxes or in the case of Carly’s Mom, about 1000+ spots for the kids to put on their clothes (all four classes)!

Friday was a “normal” day in Room 301! Reading groups resumed, stations were explored and we looked back fondly at all of the fun we had this week!

Next Week’s Snack Leaders Include:

Monday: Nolan; Tuesday: Skylar; Wednesday: Geneva; Thursday: Gabby; Friday: Emma

Important Upcoming Date….

Way down the road, on Friday, April 1st we will be celebrating the month of March as March is Reading Month. A traditional part of this day is having your child dress up as their favorite book character and bringing the book to school. For instance, if you child LOVES Clifford books, you’ll want to send them to school dressed as “Clifford the Big Red Dog”. We will be sending home more information in the next few weeks but I wanted to give you a head’s up now so that you could start planning your child’s costume!

Happy Valentine's Day! :-)

If you weren't able to make it to our classroom yesterday, check out all of the festivities! From mailing our cards to snack to the party, it was one of the best day's of the year!

Slideshow made with Smilebox

Friday, February 11th

Happy Friday!! It’s been another wonderful week in 301!! The little Weckies sure are excited for their first Valentines’ Day at school! We have been working hard this week on our Valentines’ holders and if I might say, they are BEE-utiful!!

This week at Dublin was also spent celebrating the “Season of Non-violence”. In Kindergarten this meant we read a few books this week that dealt with kindness and bullies. We talked about being kind to people and treating our friends how we would want to be treated. We talked about how the words and action we use can hurt feelings. We read several good books including Audrey Penn’s Chester Raccoon and the Big Bad Bully and Pat Thomas’ Stop Picking on Me. We had a really great discussion about both of these books and will refer back to them as needed in our classroom.

Reader’s Workshop: This week in Workshop we focused on the “-am” chunk in words. We brainstormed a list of words with “-am” at the end and also read a short little-book that featured many of these words and many names with –am. Reading groups continued to meet as well. To help clarify, if your child is in groups 1, 2 or 3, your child will ONLY need their book-bag at school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If your child is in groups 4 or 5, your child will ONLY need their book-bag at school on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Writer’s Workshop: An important part of writing is having an audience. Writers need to have a purpose when they sit down to compose a piece and our kids have been THRILLED at the newest component of our Writer’s Workshop. We have really been focusing on sharing our work. We’ve been talking about how we can set an example as an individual for the writers in our class with the work we do. We started a new story on Monday and were reminded that it needed a beginning, a middle and an ending. To help our writer’s along the way, they have been introduced to four new words: FIRST, NEXT, THEN and LAST. When planning a story, you need to tell what happens in a sequential order. To build our understanding of this we have been working on “pre-tellings”. This is where we have stopped and retold how we do something. We practiced pre-telling how we get ready for lunch and how we get ready for snack. As an added treat, we also practiced “How we eat a cookie” this afternoon! It is impressive to see what our kids have been up to in Writer’s Workshop!

I have included a slideshow here of the four writers who shared their work today with our class!

Create your own free slideshow

Math: In math we have been focusing on graphing this week. Students have created a couple different graphs. We graphed the types of shoes we were wearing (buckles, laces, Velcro, etc.) and we also played a dice game where students graphed the number of rolls they made on a certain side of the dice.

Important Info:


Valentines’ Day Party – 1:45 Monday, February 14th


Snack Leader’s: Monday: Ben; Tuesday: Kasey; Wednesday: Matthew; Thursday: Kelsey; Friday: Narek

Friday, February 4th

Greetings from Room 301! It’s been a short, but fun-filled busy week for our kids. We celebrated Groundhog’s Day, the Chinese New Year and even had a special technology coach come and teach us how to use a new program in the Dublin computer lab!

Reader’s Workshop

This week in Workshop we have been working on building our sight word list. We’ve picked out words from book that we see often, added them to our classroom word wall and have been finding them in books we read. (We’ve even been making sure to use these words – spelled correctly – in our writing pieces). Guided Reading Groups met every day this week with an exception to Thursday. Thursday was a different day as we celebrated the Chinese New Year and had our time in the computer lab with Mrs. Getosian (Mrs. G.) our technology coach! Thank you for making sure guided reading book bags are being returned on time!

Writer’s Workshop

This week in Workshop we have had one motto, “When we write sentences we use lowercase letters in our words.” The kids have been striving to remember capital letters for the first letter of a sentence and then making sure the rest of the letters are lowercase. Our kids will be expected in first grade to write with lowercase letters. Why not start practicing now as we are getting better and better at writing our lowercase letters? We have also been talking about the three parts of a story (beginning, middle and end) and how we should include these parts in our writing.

Math

In math this week we have been back on a measuring and weighing series of lessons. The kids have been using standard and non-standard forms of measurements to measure items and distances in our classroom. We were introduced to tape measures and used these tools to measure different objects in our room. We also used our feet to measure and talked about how using my foot would give us a different number than a Kindergarten foot!

Social Studies

An important part of our Social Studies curriculum is introducing the kids to a variety of holidays. February 3^rd started the celebration of the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Rabbit. To celebrate we began the day on Thursday by making dragon masks. We talked about how the masks can be used in parades to celebrate at festivals in China. Then we read a story about a rabbit (keeping with the theme of the year). Last we created paper lanterns to use to decorate for the holiday. Everyone also found a fun treat waiting for them in their folders to celebrate at home! :-)

Important Info

If you have not done so already, PLEASE make sure to send in your child’s Valentines’ box (one large cereal box) so that we can begin decorating them on Monday!

Snack Leaders: Monday: Nick; Tuesday: Carly; Wednesday: Ava; Thursday: Thomas; Friday: Lily

Have a fabulous weekend – Enjoy the snow! Mrs. Weckstein

Friday, January 28th

It has been a fantastic week in Room 301! It has really been noticeable this week how much our kids have grown into independent workers. In September we could write independently for about 5 minutes. Today, we can write for 15 minutes independently! In September we could read independently for 3-5 minutes. Today, we can read for nearly 10-15 minutes. In November we started stations and could handle four stations in a week. This week our kids traveled to ten stations over three days! It has literally been awesome for me to watch these kids grow, form friendships, come out of their shells, and work together as a team, as a school family.
Reader’s Workshop

Guided reading groups have met EVERY day this week! Please be sure that when your child brings home a book bag it is returned to school with a signed parent “comment” form! Many parents have been leaving great comments about how their child has been doing with the books at home. There have also been a few questions about books being sent home for a “re-read”. On almost all nights two books will come home with your child. One will be a new text. Please spend time going over this text with your child (looking at the pictures, saying the words, even spelling the words). The second text is called a “re-read”. This book comes home for a second trip for many reasons. When it comes home it comes home as a familiar text. Reading something familiar helps to build confidence in our readers so that when they read, they not only feed good about themselves, but they are imprinting sight words (high frequency words) into their minds. Secondly, we want our kids to sound as though they were talking when they read. We call this fluency. We want our readers to sound fluent.

Writer’s Workshop

This week the kids have been working on a “beginning”, “middle” and “ending” to a story. New terms of “Once upon a time” and “Last” have been introduced as a way to get a story started and finish off a story. It has really been neat to see the kids using strategies we practice over and over as a whole group independently. You can see them “stretching” out words like a piece of chewed bubble gum so that they can pick out the sounds within a word, and then transcribe the letters on their paper.

Math

In Math this week we have been continued our work with addition. We are using numbers that when combined add up to 10 or less. These mathematicians have been introduced to many of the tools we have to use in our room to help us count (counting bears, cubes, counting dinosuars, etc.). We have also been working with pan balances and comparing objects to find out which is heavier, which is lighter, and how we can make different objects equal (balanced). This was a VERY popular station this week during Work Stations!

Important News

Information came home this week regarding our Valentines’ Day Party on Monday, February 14th. Please make sure to send in your child’s cereal box ASAP for their card holders.

Additionally, I wanted to let you know about a unique opportunity being offered in the Walled Lake School District right now. Walled Lake’s Foundation For Excellence is sponsoring a 50-50 raffle called the “Tuition Expedition”. You can purchase a $100 raffle ticket for this event by calling Sandy Richards George at the ESC at (248) 956-2116. There will be 500 tickets sold across the district. The winner either receives $25,000 to be put towards college tuition for your child OR there is a $20,000 cash payout. You can get more info on this at www.foundation4excellence.com .

I bring this to your attention because it was the Walled Lake Foundation for Excellence that awarded me the grant money last year ($3,750) to purchase all of our Smartboard Equipment. We are so very fortunate in WL to have a foundation established with a dedicated staff wanting to help out our classroom teachers. Without this funding, YOUR child would not be having the experience they are having this year with this advanced technology in their classroom. We are the only classroom at Dublin to have this equipment and are one out of less than 5 elementary classrooms in the whole district (14 elementary schools) to have this technology. I was very fortunate to receive this funding and am hoping that you too are very appreciative of this learning tool. If you are able to do so and purchase a raffle ticket, you would be helping the Foundation to grow and give more to the students of Walled Lake. If you are unable to purchase a raffle ticket, please check the web site www.foundation4excellence.com for other exciting events they will be hosting this year and over the summer.


Snack Leader’s: Monday: Geneva; Tuesday: Gabby; Wednesday: Emma; Thursday: Hannah; Friday: Robby
Tuesday, February 1st – PTA Meeting in the Dublin Media Center (7:00pm)

Saturday, February 5th – Scrapbooking Crop Day in the Old Gym at Dublin (10am-8pm)

Friday, January 21st

Brrrrrr….!!! What a cold end to the week!!!



It has been a fabulous two weeks of color in Room 301! The kids have thoroughly enjoyed coming to school in a different color each day, and on top, getting to wear LOTS of colors on Rainbow Day today! Thank you for your support at home in helping to make sure our kids came to school each day in a certain color. I have to tell you, it made it very easy to find our class in the hallway, just look for the color of the day!


Reader’s Workshop: All reading assessments have been completed and I am very enthusiastic about the growth that our students have been making as a reader. Guided Reading Groups also met towards the end of this week and will meet every day next week and beyond! I have had several questions about the books coming home as the kids get good at “memorizing” the text. Here’s what you can do… You can write the words out on a paper or use magnetic letters if you have them, and practice with them looking at the letters and sounds to figure out the words. Additionally you can cover the illustration and ask them to read to you. It is important though, as our kids begin to learn to read, for them to be able to cross-check between the word, the picture and go back to read the word, as well as to do some memorization of our high frequency words (the, a, said, it, to, etc.). Next week we will be setting our first goals as readers! I’ll be sure to share those with you.


Writer’s Workshop: This week in Writer’s Workshop we have been focusing on a new strategy, “Buzz Groups”. Each child has a writing partner and they spent time “buzzing” with their partner, talking about their writing. They could ask each other questions about their writing, as well as help each other with tricky words. It is important that our students see how partners can help them to improve as a writer.


Math: This week in Math we worked on two different things. We practiced measuring different objects and people around the room with non-standard forms of measurement tools (chains, paperclips, unifix cubes, etc). We also did a fun rainbow activity on Friday where the kids were asked to sort 10 M & M’s by color, and then create a graph of their candy. They LOVED this food activity!! 


Important News: Our Valentine’s Day party will be on Monday, February 14th from 1:40-3:10pm in Room 301. Look for a list to come home with your child next week of everyone’s first names. Your child can bring in a Valentine’s Day card for each child (a great way for your kiddo to practice writing their name with an CAPITAL letter to start and lowercase letters for the rest) to pass out the week before Valentine’s Day.


Snack Leader’s Next Week: Monday: Mason; Tuesday: Evan; Wednesday: Alycia; Thursday: Nolan; Friday: Skylar


Have a wonderful weekend… Stay Warm!  Mrs. Weckstein