September 27 Classroom Headlines

Language Arts

This week during Writer's Workshop, we continued to work in our journals by writing personal narratives. The students were encouraged to create detailed pictures and then dictated their stories for me. We're beginning to work on stretching out our words by "pulling" them out of our mouths. Tying in a kenistetic movement, like pulling something apart slowly, helps students understand that they need to stretch out the words they're saying in order to hear all of the sounds in that word. The goal right now is for the students to begin hearing beginning or ending sounds they can write down as their inventive spelling, helping us to get used to writing by ourselves in our journals. 

Our new sight word this week is "the." The students worked on reading the word with our newest book bag book, Setting The Table.This book was put into our browsing bag in the classroom and will be used in the classroom over the coming weeks as one of our "just right books" for the students to read during our Daily 5 time.

We introduced the letters Mm and Nn this week in Fundations. Homework for these letters will be sent home on Tuesday, October 1.

Math

We have finished our first chapter in Math In Focus! We worked with the number 5 this week by counting groups of 5 and writing the numeral 5 in our workbooks.

To tie in with our apple activities this week, we read 10 Apples Up On Top, by Dr. Seuss. The students traced the numerals 1-10 on apples, cut the apples out and then pasted them in order on top of a drawing of their own heads.

Health & Science

We continued to discuss being safe in public by talking about using the Buddy System. We talked a lot about why and when we need to use a buddy to keep safe.

In science, we began using scientific tools, large magnifying squares, outside to observe what was in our square. We then recorded our observations by drawing pictures of what we saw in our squares.

Other News

*We will begin our share calendar this week. Each child will have an opportunity to bring in an object or tell a story that is important to them. I mentioned to the students that when they share these objects or stories that I'll ask three questions - What is it? Where did you get it? and Why is it important to you? The share calendar is now posted on our blog.

*Thank you for offering to volunteer in our classroom! I will begin contacting parents this week with our volunteer schedule for the next few months. My hope is that our volunteers will begin the week of October 7th.

The Second Week - Sept. 20th

I was excited to meet and talk with all of the parents during curriculum night on Wednesday. Thank you for your thoughtful questions. If any other questions pop up while reviewing the jam-packed folder, just let me know!

Language Arts

The whole class has been practicing writing our full names to get practice with all of the letters of our names. We will continue to practice writing our names over the coming weeks as well. We also graphed our names by how many numbers were in each student's name. We found that we had most names with five letters!

Fundations - We have been introduced to three new letters, Tt, Bb and Ff, this week. The students have been practicing these sounds in various ways by sky writing (drawing air letters), tracing the letters in their workbooks, and writing letters on the dry erase boards in class. We've been working on our pencil grip and use our chant - grip, grip, pencil grip - to help remind us of how to hold the pencil each time we write. We will also begin sending our first homework practice pages for letters Tt, Bb and Ff next Tuesday, September 24.

Writer's Workshop - We read the book, All the Places to Love, by Patricia McLachlan and talked about how authors use ideas that are very important to them to inspire their writing. The students wrote and drew about a place that they love.

Math In Focus

We jumped right into our math program this week, Math In Focus. We practiced using numbers to 4 in various ways this week. We looked at pairs of items, how pictures and objects can be the same and different from others, and began using manipulatives to help aid us in our math thinking. 

Science and Health

We began talking about being safe during the fall and the height of our town's exciting time, the Topsfield Fair. We began by practicing writing our name, town, state and phone number. We will continue talking about keeping ourselves and others safe over the coming weeks.

During our morning meetings and other moments in our day, we have also been talking about making sure we're all safe and happy in our classroom. The students worked together to create a set of our own classroom rules this week and we illustrated what it meant to promise each other be kindr, help our friends, use walking feet, not hurt anyone on the inside or the outside, and to raise our hands and wait for our turn to talk. We will continue working together to create a classroom in which we're all feeling safe and are able to take learning risks together.

Reminders

If you plan to chaperon OR volunteer in our classroom, please be sure to contact Mrs. B. in the front office to complete a CORI check. 

Early release will be on Wednesday, September 25 at 1:15 pm.

Welcome to Kindergarten!

Welcome to the first week of Kindergarten! Our class has been getting into our routines and having fun playing and working together.

I'll be adding information on our curriculum, activities and news from our classroom on this blog. My hope is to have information updated every Friday or Saturday for the previous week.

I can't wait to see you all at Curriculum night on Wednesday, September 18th at 7:00 pm. I'm looking forward to discussing the classroom, curriculum and our upcoming year together!