Specials: Gym: Monday & Wednesday mornings (gym shoes required!) Music - Tuesday & Thursday Computer Lab - Friday Library - Friday (return library book every Friday)
Snacks: Please send in a healthy snack for your child each day. We are a PEANUT FREE classroom due to students with allergies, so please no peanuts/peanut butter. Please do NOT put it inside of their lunch box, as they will eat it at lunch and won't have a snack for the afternoon. Please do not send in messy snacks that would require a fork/spoon to eat. Keep it simple and relatively healthy. Thanks!!
Nightly Reading: In kindergarten, your child will be learning so many new and exciting things! You will be amazed (and so proud) of all of the learning your child does this year! One of the most important things you can do at home to help your child is to read every night with your child for at least 15 min. It really does make a difference!
DAILY 5: This year, we are doing the Daily 5 in our classroom. The Daily 5™ is a series of literacy tasks which students complete daily while the teacher meets with small groups or confers with individuals. It is a structure that will help students develop the daily habits of reading, writing, and working with peers that will lead to a lifetime of independent literacy. Each day, your child will participate in activities such as "Read to Self," "Read to Someone," "Work on Writing," "Word Work," and "Listen to Reading." You may hear your students use these terms and refer to the Daily 5 at home.
We will be in the launching phase of Daily 5 until mid-October, as it takes time to learn the routines. We will practice building "stamina" and working independently. During the Daily 5 time as students will work on these independent tasks, I will work with individuals or small groups of students on reading/literacy skills. I will include some picture of our Daily 5 tasks under our Classroom Pictures tab as we move forward.
*Here is a brief overview of our first semester. See the weekly "What's The Scoop?" newsletters for more specific details.
FIRST SEMESTER LANGUAGE ARTS FOCUS: We will be focusing on 2-3 letters per week. We will learn how to write the upper & lowercase letters, what the letter sound is, and the motion that goes with the sound (your child can show you the motion at home). We will also be learning 2-3 "no excuse" words (aka "sight words) per week. These are words that are the most commonly used words in the English language. Your child will encounter these words all of the time, so we will work on learning these words by sight (just by seeing them... NOT by trying to sound them out). Please see the first semester sight words on the sight word list and help your child practice at home. Your child will also be working on listening to stories and then asking & answering questions about the story as well as retelling the story. We will be working reading short books full of no excuse words and short, decodable words. In writing, your child will draw pictures and learn to label the items in their pictures with letters and then words. Later in the semester, your child will begin writing sentences to tell about their illustrations.
FIRST SEMESTER MATH FOCUS: Identifying/ordering/writing numbers 0-10, counting to 25 & then 50 (year end goal is 100), number sense (knowing a number represents a specific number of objects), addition facts, shape identification, calendar routines (see below), counting by 10's and 5's to 100, place value (tens/ones), patterning
*The following are math skills practiced daily: Ordering and recognizing numbers 1-20 Counting to 100. (goals: 1st qtr = 25; 2nd qtr = 50; 3rd qtr = 75; 4th qtr = 100) Calendar activities (day of the week, months of the year, today's date, yesterday was/today is/tomorrow will be, the pattern on our calendar, how many days we've been in school, our weather graph), ask them to sing our "Days of the Week" song and our "12 Months in a Year" song/dance, AB and ABC patterns
BUCKET FILLING: In class, we will read the book "Have You Filled Your Bucket Today?" This book is a great book to encourage positive behaviors. It teaches that each person carries around an invisible bucket with them. When the bucket is full (of good thoughts/feelings), we are the happiest. It teaches that we can help to fill other people's buckets by being kind, helpful, a good friend, etc... Therefore, try very hard to be "bucket fillers"! It also teaches that you can be a "bucket dipper" by saying/doing mean things to others. I encourage all of the students to be "bucket fillers" and not "bucket dippers." In addition, when a child displays exceptional behavior (ex: empathetic, helpful to others, kind/respectful...) they are being great bucket fillers! They may get to move to purple on our behavior chart! TAKE-HOME FOLDERS: Please remember to send your child to school each day with his/her folder. Also please remember to check it and empty it every night for notes, papers, etc... PLEASE INITIAL/SIGN YOUR CHILD'S READING LOG NIGHTLY. As the year progresses and you notice that your child's folder is falling apart, you may choose to purchase another plastic folder and just move the contents of the old folder to the new one. Thank You for your help!!