November updates

Hello room 11 families,

Can you believe we are already gearing up for the month of December?  It seems like we were just celebrating Halloween in our classroom and now November is gone!  I hope everyone had the chance to enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday with your family and loved ones.

Quick recap on our learning:

Math- we finished up our chapter on making, comparing, and sequencing groups up to 10.  We have started our addition chapter and will be working on this until the Christmas break.  Children are working in daily math centers and using the classroom chromebooks and iPads to further develop their understanding and learning of new concepts.

Phonics- we have introduced 24/26 of the lowercase letters/their sounds and have practiced how to properly write these letters.  This week, we will introduce the final 2 letters, z and q.  We are using our knowledge of these letter sounds to spell, read and write CVC words.

Language Arts- we have completed our salmon study and are now learning about owls.  We will discuss owls’ habitats, their body structures and what it means to be nocturnal.  In addition, students will get to explore owl pellets to discover what owls eat.

Writing- this quarter we are focusing on informal writing.  Each student will be assigned an animal to become an “expert” on, and will be completing a writing book on that animal after studying them, reading books, and watching videos.  More to come on that soon!

Congratulations to our November PRIDE stars- Jayden and Griffin!  Great job showing how to be respectful, responsible and safe!

Happy November birthdays to Carter on the 18th and Jayden on the 28th!

Have a great week everyone!

Week of November 5-9

Hello Room 11 families!

Happy Veterans Day- thank you to all who have served, are currently serving, or know someone who has served in the armed forces.  Students showed their appreciation for our veterans by coloring and writing thank you notes last week.  As part of the Feinstein committee at Whiteknact, these cards and letters were sent out to military veterans this holiday.

Quick updates on our learning this past week!

K focus centers: we are now learning about salmon and their life cycles.  We have looked at live feeds of fish and sketched their body structures.  We are comparing the structure of a fish to the structure of the human body from our investigations a few weeks ago and noting the similarities and differences.  We are also focusing on which body parts we use for different activities (running, sitting, sleeping, talking, writing, playing soccer, etc).  Students are continuing to build and act out Habitats and life cycles of different animals in blocks and dramatic play.  We are studying books by Leo Lionni and students are creating art pieces inspired by his work.

Math- we are comparing numbers up to 10 is in g greater than, less than or equal to.  We are arranging numbers in counting order, practicing counting up from a number other than one, and forming different combinations to build 10 using ten frames and manipulafives.

Writing- we continue to talk about procedural writing and the steps required to complete a task.

I-ready testing:  Kindergarten just finished their I-ready testing on the computer for both math and reading.  This information will be used to arrange small groups for intervention as well as enrichment, as well as determine who will receive additional reading support with our reading specialist, Mrs. Sarasin.

Reminder- Wednesday evening we have parent-teacher conferences from 5-7.  Thursday (11/15) is an early release day- students will be dismissed at 12, and conferences continue from 1-3.  Please contact me if you cannot keep your scheduled conference or need another reminder of your time.

The canned food drive continues for the next few weeks—please send in your canned fruit to support this initiative.  Thank you!

I hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend.  See everyone tomorrow! :)

End of October

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the lack of posts these past 2 weeks - life got busy!  Here's a quick recap of what we have been learning in Room 11 since the last update:

K Focus Centers: We have completed our first unit of community and have started Unit 2: Animals and Habitats.  We have started learning about tadpoles and frogs, and we are starting to learn about fish as well.  In the next few weeks, we will specifically focus on salmon and their life cycle.  Our dramatic play area has been transformed into a woodlands area where students are acting out life cycles of animals and their habitats.  At the block center, the challenge has been to recreate a tadpole or a frog with different blocks.  In the discovery center, the sand table has transformed into a water table.  We also have been sketching the outline of our bodies on butcher paper and labeling parts of the body.  We are using our scientific thinking to identify different features of children in the class and how some are the same and some are different.

In math, we have practiced identifying, counting and writing all of our numbers 0-9.  We have also discussed the concepts of greater than, less than and equal to.

For writing, students have been starting to sound out words to label and write sentences to match their drawings.  We have done personal recounts and are now moving into procedural and informational writing.

In phonics centers, we are continuing our letter names and sounds, starting to sound out simple words, clapping out syllables in words, and reading common sight words.

Shout out to our October Pride Star winners - Amy and Austin.  Great job showing how to be Responsible, Respectful and Safe in school! :)

Thank you to all who have donated socks for our Socktober drive - as of this morning, our class has brought in 250 pairs of socks to help those in need!

Reminder - tomorrow is Halloween and our family engagement activity.  9:45-10:45 families are invited in to our classroom for some pumpkin painting with their kindergartener.  All supplies will be provided for you. :)  Costumes are allowed at school tomorrow, but please no weapons or masks allowed.  Thank you.

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Week of 10/8-10/12

Good evening kindergarten families,

I hope everyone has enjoyed their weekend!  Here's a recap of last week's learning, and a preview of the next few weeks:

Last week, we continued our phonics lessons by learning the letters and sounds of /a/ and /g/.  Students were able to practice forming the letters on their whiteboards, finding the letters in the alphabet with their magnet letter tiles, and matching the letter name with the sound it makes.  We reviewed stretching out our vowel sounds.  We have now introduced the letters t, b, f, n, m, i, u, c, o, a, and g.

In phonics centers, we are working on syllable sorting, rhyming, writing beginning sounds, conversational skills using the prompt "I like to ____________________ when I am with my friends.", and using our chromebooks to play phonics game.  As always, we are also practicing independent and buddy reading in the library area.

Our book this past week was The Name Jar, and this week we are focusing in on the story Big Al and Shrimpy.  We are doing a close read to identify the author's purpose for writing and what message the author wanted to share with his readers.

We completed our first quarter writing task on Chrysanthemum.  After reading, students were asked to draw and label pictures of the main character and setting of the story.  We will be finishing up our inital study of personal recounts this week.

In math, we are now working on identifying, counting, and writing our numbers 6-9.

For PBIS, we are watching videos of Bubbles, our school mascot, making poor choices around school, and learning what better choices there are to show how to be responsible, respectful, and safe.  These videos have led to good class discussions on how to behave at school.  We will continue watching more of these videos this week.

Kudos to Javiel, Jayden, and Amy for receiving last week's positive notes for excellent behavior! :)

Reminders: Picture Day is tomorrow, Monday, October 15.  Socktober continues the remainder of the month and donations can be brought right into our classroom.  Class brick donations can be brought in anytime.  Finally, Fundraising order forms are due back by October 26.

Here's to a wonderful week of new learning! :)

Welcome to October!

Hello kindergarten families,

Hard to believe that we are already done with the month of September!  It was a busy, fun-filled month of laughing, learning, and developing our rituals and routines.   Welcome to October and all the new things we will be learning this month!

We are really in the swing of things with our new Boston K Curriculum and the daily centers that go along with it.  Students are learning all about Our Community through the read-alouds this month.  We read Abiyoyo, Abuela, Amazing Grace, Chrysanthemum and The Name Jar.  We have focused on how everyone is different and unique and special in their own way.  The class has also focused in on the concept of characters and settings in a story, and we have been recreating these concepts of print in our centers.

In our Art Studio center, we have explored a lot of different concepts with paint.  We introduced the primary colors of yellow, red, and blue and have practiced with color mixing to create new colors.  Later, we introduced the color white to explore color tinting.  Finally, we added black to the mix to see what happens then.  In addition to easel painting, we have recently added watercolor painting, which has quickly become a class favorite! The walls of our classroom are now covered in beautiful watercolor creations!

In the dramatic play area, we are focusing on how to retell a story with storyacting.  We have read our read-alouds many times, so students are very familiar with the stories.

At the block center, we are trying to recreate settings in the stories we have read.  We are building Abiyoyo's village, Abuela's cityscape and have recently begun to create our school and classroom communities.  We have introduced adding signs and pictures from the writing and drawing center to make our block structures even better!

In our science and discovery center, we have been working on using our five senses to describe different items.  We've brainstormed words to describe how things feel (smooth, hard, rough, bumpy, scaly, scratchy, soft, etc)  We have also used the sense of sight to observe the classroom and draw a classroom map of the important features.  This week, we are focusing on our sense of hearing and how to categorize items into columns labeled Loud, Quiet, and Silent.

In writing, we started with oral storytelling.  We are now beginning to draw and write about personal recounts, after reading the story Bippity Bop Barbershop.  We have discussed the "orientation" of a story - the who, when, where and what of our story.  We are practicing sequence of events and how to draw a conclusion from a story.  Later this week, we will be learning about verbs and how to act out the personal recounts we are writing.

Math has us learning all about our numbers to 5!  We have learned how to count, write, sequence and compare numbers 0-5 using the words greater than, less than and equal to.  We are doing lots of practice with these concepts in our daily math stations.

Finally, we are learning a lot about letters and their sounds in our phonics lessons.  So far, we have learned about the letters t, f, b, n, m, i, u, c and o.  We practice how to form the letters in writing, the sounds the letter makes, and identify a keyword to help us remember the letter sound.  We reinforce these concepts in our daily WOW stations in the afternoon, our morning Fundations lessons, and our weekly phonics poems.

As you can see, kindergarten has been a busy place!  We are 27 days in and have already made such great progress! :)  Of course, we are also working on being kind, respectful and good members of our classroom and school communities.

Shout out to our September PRIDE Star winners - Sydney and Javiel!  And a happy birthday to our September babies - Aiden and Griffin!

Please remember that October is Socktober - any new pairs of socks that you can donate will greatly help someone in need through Hope and Faith and Crossroads RI.  Thank in advance for your generosity!

Have a great week! :)

Week of September 10-14

Good afternoon kindergarten families,

We are continuing to get used to our classroom routines and procedures!  We have started our second week of our study on communities.  We have read the folktale Abiyoyo and the fictional story Abuela.  We've been discussing author's purpose for writing a story and have experimenting with different types of writing during our daily Writer's Workshop.  In our focus centers, we have now opened all 6 of our center areas - blocks, dramatic play, art studio, drawing/writing, library/listening and discovery table.  We are creating all kinds of things - castles, sea animals, sand castles, villages, and even rewriting our own versions of Abiyoyo!

You will be receiving Homelinks for each new week of our unit studies.  The first two weeks are coming home today.  They will give you some information about what we are focusing on in class, stories we are reading, and questions you can ask your child to discover more about what they are learning!  These do not need to be returned - you can keep all of these at home for your own reference.

Beginning next week, your child will be receiving a weekly homework packet.  These will go home on Mondays and be expected back on Fridays.  They should be very brief and serve as a reinforcement of skills we are doing in school.  These will not be graded - it's just extra practice for your child, and an opportunity to see firsthand what your child is working on.  There will be games that you can keep at home that you can use over and over again! :)

We will be using lots of different educational websites in school this year.  I will highlight a few of them every once in a while.  Below are two that we are going to start using next week: www.zearn.org and www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/

www.zearn.org is a website for math games.  The skills build as your child progresses through each level.  Each student has their own student login, so they will only be working on their own skills at their own pace.  Once we start using it in class, I can send home a copy of the login cards so your child can work on this website at home as well, if you choose.

https://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/u/1760469 is our class page for early reading and phonics skills.  If you login to our page specifically, your child's username is simply his/her first name.  Again, this website progresses through the skills and builds upon the previous level.  You can also download this as an app (Teach Your Monster to Read).  The class code for this is 1760469.

Lastly, just a reminder to send in a pair of headphones labeled with your child's name if you have not done so already.  These will be important as we begin using our computers often in class.  Thank you for your cooperation!

Lots of exciting things are happening in kindergarten.  The class is building great friendships and I have a feeling we are going to have a fantastic year!

Enjoy your weekend, everybody!

Beginning of Kindergarten

Hello families,

We are off to a great start in kindergarten!  It has not always been easy dealing with this heat, but the kids are showing great Whiteknact perseverance.  Thank you for your patience and cooperation while we navigate these early release days.  Please continue to send your child in with a water bottle so they can stay hydrated throughout the day.

We have been practicing our routines and procedures in the classroom.  We are learning how to sit together on the rug, work cooperatively at our tables, and how to do our best work.  We are working on how to walk in quiet lines in the hallway, how to make lunch choices in the morning, and how to pack up at the end of the day.

We have started to introduce our daily centers.  So far, we have opened the library area, the writing center, and art studio with playdoh and painting.  Next week, we will begin to use the dramatic play area, the blocks center and the STEM/discovery bin.  Very exciting!

Tomorrow, September 6th is another early release day for extreme heat.  Dismissal will be at 12:00.  Breakfast and lunch will be served.

Reminder that next Wednesday, September 12th is no school for primary day.

Have a great night and stay cool!

Welcome to the 2018-2019 School Year!

Welcome to a brand new school year!  I am excited to be your child's teacher and I am looking forward to having a lot of fun this year.  We will be creators, explorers, investigators, writers, readers, mathematicians, scientists, actors and actresses, and so much more!  Please be sure to check back to the website often, follow our class on Twitter, and look for updates on Class Dojo so you don't miss out on all the fun! :)

Let the fun of kindergarten begin!