End of Quarter 2 Wrap-up

Hello kindergarten families,

January has been a busy month in kindergarten!  Here are a few of the highlights from the last few weeks:

• We learned and celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King and his dreams of the world.  We created our own MLK "I Have a Dream" papers, which are hanging in the hallway outside of our classroom.  We also worked with our art teacher, Miss G, on some MLK projects, some of which you can see at City Hall through the month of February!

• We finished our unit of study on animals and habitats and celebrated with our Animal Showcase.  Students loved being "experts" on frogs, salmon, owls and wolves and showing their families all they had learned!  Thank you to all of you who were able to attend this day.

• We completed our math study on subtraction.  Once we finish with our i-ready middle of year testing, we will be moving on to work with teen numbers.

• We have continued writing our animal reports during writing time, recording new facts about our animals, what our animals can/have/need, and labeling parts of the body.

• In phonics, we continue to practice tapping out sounds to read basic CVC words.  We also learn 2-3 new sight words each week as part of our weekly phonics poem.

• Students are completing middle of the year i-ready testing through February 8th in both reading and math.  This will give us an idea of the progress that has been made since beginning of year testing happened in November and help us plan interventions moving forward.

Congratulations to our January PRIDE Stars, Aiden and Levi!  And happy January birthdays to Javiel, Armani and Levi.

Reminders: 

1. The chocolate rose fundraiser is being filled weekly, so please feel free to send them in as you get them.
2. Money for the Sweetheart Dance is due by Friday, February 1st.  Tickets will not be sold at the door, so make sure to send your money and permission slips in by this date.
3. February 5th is the 100th day of school.  Please send back 100th day of school projects at this time.   
4. Our Family Engagement activity will take place on February 12th from 9:45-10:45.  If you would like to attend this craft day (we will be making valentine's day card holders), please be sure to send the slip back by February 11th.
5. If you would like to send in classroom valentines, you are welcome to do so.  All we ask is that NO CANDY OR FOOD OF ANY KIND is sent in.  If candy or food is brought it, we will need to send it back home with you, per the district's wellness policy.  Thank you for cooperating with this.

Looking forward to what February will bring! :)

Happy New Year!

Hello Whiteknact Families!

Happy New Year!  I apologize for the long overdue blog post - the holidays were a crazy time for everyone and time got away from me!

Here's a quick update on what the class has been working on lately:

We have continued our Animals and Habitats unit of study by studying owls and wolves.  We have compared the animals and discussed how they are the same and how they are different.  Students have been working hard on different projects in anticipation of our Animals and Habitats showcase later this month.  At this time, they will show what they've learned about frogs, salmon, owls, and wolves through a slideshow, projects, writing samples and answering some "expert questions."  We hope many of you will be able to join us for this event!

In writing we have been focusing our attention on informative writing and animal reports.  In addition to writing about the animals in our ELA unit of study, each student has an animal they have been researching and collecting facts on.  These reports will be shared at a later date! :)

In phonics, we have begun tapping out the sounds in simple 3 letter words, blending and segmenting our sounds, as well as spelling these words on our whiteboards.  We are learning how to properly write all of our uppercase letters too!

For math, we are moving on from addition of numbers to 10 and will begin learning about subtraction in the next few weeks.  Students are practicing these skills through computer programs, math centers, and math workbooks.

End of quarter testing will be taking place in the month of January, both on the computers and in paper and pencil tasks.  Expect 2nd quarter report cards on February 1.

Congrats to our December Pride Stars - Ishaly and Carter.  Great job!  And a happy December birthday to Austin! :)

More updates coming soon!

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!

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!

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! :)