This Week...

I hope you all are doing well and had a great weekend.  We have a lot going on this week.  We have the next round of DIBELS this week.  We will be measuring how your child is doing with letter naming fluency, phoneme segmentation (this is where we find out if your child can hear all the sounds in the words like in cat, your child can hear the /c/ /a/ /t/), and nonsense words (basically we are checking your child's ability in reading sounds of letters).  I am confident your child will do well and we will use this information to determine what your child needs to work on and needs further instruction.  In math, we are continuing to work on addition and working toward fluency of number sentences.  Please take time to review the math sheets that are brought home throughout the week and take a couple minutes to talk to your child about it.  One great thing you can do is ask your child to explain to you what to do on this sheet!

In addition, this week we will say good bye to Ms. Fordyce on Thursday.  She will be graduating and earning her teaching license at the end of the month.  I have been impressed with her this semester and loved watching her work with your children.  She had some great lessons we planned together.  I know the children will miss her, but I have told her to come back and visit.  I am also trying to have her come back and be our guest teacher when and if I am out of the building.

I hope you have a great week.  It is hard to believe it is the second week of December!

This Week...

I hope you all had a great weekend!  I know my family did as we did a little traveling and we found a new puppy (standard poodle) to join our family in December.  She is the cutest little thing...I am sure the kids will hear a lot about Reese when she comes home...she is only 4 weeks right now.  I also cannot believe we are in the second week of November already.  We do have a lot of fun things happening this month for the children.  There will be more information coming home mid-week.

We are continuing to work on the letters and sounds of the alphabet.  In addition, we are working on blending sounds to read simple words.  Some of the words we are reading are make-believe.  This is so the children can have practice at reading.  We also then can decide if the word is a real word and make believe word.  The words are all 3 letters (consonant-vowel-consonant).  A word that may pop up would be roc and your child may think it is a real word because it sounds like rock.  We would tell them this is a real word because developmentally they are not ready for the -ck ending and we are working on reading not spelling at this time.

We are also beginning more writing and the children are working on writing the sounds they hear in words.  I am amazed by what the children can hear and how much they are loving to write.  I love when the children bring me in fun stories they have written at home.  I hope your child has been trying to write at home.  When encouraging your child to write, do not worry about spelling, but what they actually hear in the words.  Today we are working on book reports about what we thought about the book "A Bed for the Winter!"

In math we are beginning simple addition.  This week we will learn about the idea of putting things together and telling addition stories.  For example, a child has 2 pieces of candy and then she received 1 more.  Some children are having difficulty with number identification; therefore, please take a few minutes to practice identifying numbers to 10.  This will help when your child has to write addition number sentences.

A Peek into this Week...

We will be reading Dig, Dig, Digging this week.  The children will work on classifying and categorizing (sorting).  I think the children will love this book as it deals with construction and machines!  We will be working with learning the letter sound of Tt.  The children should know the sound of Mm when shown the letter card of m.  If children are excelling, we are working on all the letter sounds and blending of words.  If your child is having difficulty, we are working with letter names and the sound of m.

We will begin to work with numbers 6-10.  The children will work on building and modeling the those numbers.  In addition, we will learn how to read the number words for 6-10.  We will continue to practice greater and less than.  I assessed the children on Thursday and I noticed many children had a difficult time with less than.  Children will be bringing home their assessments tomorrow.

It is important to note the end of the quarter is Oct. 24 and the children should be able to name all their letters and know approximately 6 sounds.  In math, children should be able to count to 25 (100 by the end of the year) and write their numbers to 10 (20 by the end of the year).

Math Fun...

This past week we worked with jelly beans to count, graph, sort, and make number sentences!  We had a lot of fun and thank you to the various families who sent in jelly beans and eggs!

Working Hard...

This is the end of the 3rd quarter...oh my!  I cannot believe we only have 9 weeks remaining.  The biggest area where many children need to continue to work is sight words.  I have completed all sight word assessments over the past week and will be sending those home with children at the end of the week.  I encourage you to take some time to practice these words.

We are continuing to practice reading simple words (3 letter words) and some children are working on reading words with blends (sl, fl, sm, dr, tr) and digraphs (ch, sh, wh, th).  I am impressed with how the children are doing with this skill.  In math, we are reviewing groups of ten, addition, and subtraction!

Math Fun...

In math, we worked on ordering numbers 1-10.  The children used playing cards to help with our learning.  In addition, one person got to "hide" a card and the other had to figure out the missing card. 

The Fun is Continuing...

I hope the children enjoyed their time off of school.  I know the A class only comes on Wednesday this week and the B class only came once last week; therefore, we are continuing our learning from last week.  This allows the children to have all the same lessons as each other.  We will work with the story "My Lucky Day" in Reading Street.  We will also be concentrating on final sounds in words.  Children should be able to isolate the last sound in a word and tell you the corresponding letter.  One area Mrs. Franz and I have found to be troublesome for some of our children are the sight words.  These words are progressively becoming harder and next week we have new ones.  Please make sure to take 5 - 10 minutes to practice sight words, especially on the "off days."  This will allow the learning to continuing and to allow your child more practice on these words.  We will send home a full list of all sight words up to date this week for your reference.

In math, we are working with teen numbers and building numbers.  Children should be able to read and write numbers to 20 and be able to compare these numbers.  This helps us as we will begin addition and subtraction in the coming weeks.  We want this skill to be "automatic;" therefore, your child should be able to see the number and state it in less than 3 seconds (this is the same for letters and sounds).

We will be jumping rope for "Jump Rope for Heart" during recess.  In addition, I encourage everyone to go out and "move" a little.  This is to promote the healthy month of February.  Thanks again for making this such a great year and I am looking forward to the continuation of the year!

Classroom Thinking...

This week we have been working with numbers up to 9. In addition, we have been working with ways to count a set. Here are two students explaining their thinking with how they counted a set.

5 Frame Practice...

Here is a great site your child can use at home to practice 5 frames.  This allows the children to practice building various numbers, identifying numbers, and figuring out how many more.  This reinforces skills we have been doing in the classroom!  Thank you for all of your help on your child's math homework.  Almost every single child brought it back.  Today and tomorrow your child will bring home the next chapter's homework.  This will be due on October 10 or 11th.  Enjoy...

http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?ID=74

http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?ID=74

Week Number 2...

I hope all the children had a wonderful first week at WT Elementary and I hope they have shared something they have done at school with you at home. It was a fun and hectic week. We are working on learning procedures of the classroom and the school. The children are learning these procedures at different rates; however, I am positive the children will have them down in the next week or so. I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know your children and have enjoyed working with them.

This coming week we will continue to practice procedures, but also dive into our literacy and math curriculum. We will be working on letter identification; specifically, the letters Aa, Bb, Cc, Dd, and Ee. In addition, we will work on rhyming words and identifying the high-frequency words of "I" and "am". In math we will begin to work with numbers 1-5. We will also be working on writing our names with a capital letter at the beginning and then lowercase letters. Mrs. Franz and I will be sending home a homework letter on Monday/Tuesday explaining how homework will be completed this year. Please look for this in your child's folder. Please also check out our post on homework!

We do eat lunch late at school. Our lunch time is 12:30; therefore, the children have a long time between when they arrive at school to when they eat lunch. We do have a snack to help them make it to lunch. Mrs. Franz and I will be sending home a letter explaining more about snack time at school later this week. Please encourage your child to eat breakfast before coming to school or you may purchase breakfast at school.

I also want to take this moment to express my gratitude... your help and support with our new drop-off/pick-up procedures has been amazing. It is becoming smoother each day and this would not be possible without your help and your patience!! THANK YOU!!

Back to Learning...

I hope everyone had a fantastic spring break and enjoyed the fantastic weather.  Also, if you traveled I hope you had a safe and fun time with your journey.  I would love to hear about your entire break.  We have ended the 3rd quarter and the 4th quarter is beginning.  Report cards will be coming out at the end of this week or the beginning of next week depending on what day your child comes to school.  Please review the report card and if you have any questions please feel free to ask.

This week we will continue with Unit 5 and discuss the question "What kind of transportation helps us in an emergency?"  We will be reading the story "Mayday, Mayday."  We will be using this read aloud to be discussing cause and effect.  This will allow the children to have a deeper understanding of the story and build their comprehension strategies.  We will be reviewing all the high frequency words we have learned and concentrating on the words: yellow, green, and blue.  It is imperative to continue to practice all of our sight words and to be practicing all of our sounds.  We will be having our next DIBELS assessment in the middle of May.  I know this seems to be somewhat in the distance, but it will be here before we know it.  The children should be fluent in all areas of reading (letter names, letter sounds, and hearing sounds in words).  We will use these scores for report cards and determining your child's next steps.  We are asking for you to practice for about 5-10 minutes nightly.  We will be sending home practice sheets each week.  Please look for these in your child's folder.

The children have been doing a great job with addition.  We will begin to develop an understanding of subtraction.  We will learn the differnece between addition and subtraction.  We will also learn about the subtraction symbol.  One great way to practice subtraction at home is to practice with food or pennies.  You can show your child a set of pennies (less than 5 or 10) and then have them close their eyes and take some away.  Your child then has to figure out how many you took.  This helps with the aspect of mental math.  You can also practice with showing a number sentence to your child and having them try to figure it out (they may need to use materials to help them solve the problem).  One of the most important pieces is to have them explain how they figured out the answer.  This is one of the most important pieces of the mathematical process.

I am looking forward to a fun and exciting week!

What is Going On...

We have a great deal of learning taking place in the next week and half before Thanksgiving! This week will begin by completing our work with the letter Pp. Please remember to encourage your child to make a short quick /p/ sound. We want to make sure that the children are not saying /puh/, as this will make it more
challenging when children begin to blend words together. After we complete our unit on the letter Pp, we are going to move on to the letter Cc. We will be working with the children on how to produce a hard Cc sound. On some of their papers, you may notice this written like /k/. The hard Cc sound is comparable to our Kk sound (candy, cup, cat, color). Throughout the next week and half, we will also continue to work with the sight words/popcorn words: like, we, and my.

Please continue to practice all letters, letter sounds, and sight words at home. Your continued support and work with your children at home has become very evident in the classroom. We greatly appreciate all of your extra time and effort.

Ideas for Letter/Sound Practice at Home:
1- Have students identify letter names on flashcards.
2- Have students go on a letter hunt in your home to find specific letters.
3- Have students identify letter sounds on flashcards.
4- Have students go on a sound hunt in your home to find specific items that start with a specific sound (a, m, t, s, p, c).
5- Have students begin to practice blending sounds into words. Place three letter cards in front of your child (with a vowel in the middle) and have your child begin to blend the word. Please remember, these do not have to be real words...they can be nonsense/make believe words as well!

In math, we will be continuing our introduction to 2-dimensional shapes. This week, we will review our previously learned shapes (circles and squares) and introduce the students to triangles and rectangles. Children will continue to practice identifying these shapes, as well as compare and contrast these shapes.
Also in math, we will be continuing to count to 40. Remember, students are required to count to 50 by the end of second quarter and 100 by the end of the year!

Please remember conferences are this week and next week. Purple confirmation sheets were sent home last week with report cards. Please return your confirmation forms so we can confirm your appointment. If you are unable to make the scheduled time, please let us know a convenient number or email address to
contact you. Due to our limited number of conference slots, we will need to have a phone conference if you are unavailable to attend. Please know, we worked very hard to accommodate all requests for conferences, but had to fill slots on a first come-first serve basis.

Next week (November 21st-23rd) is a short week and all students will have a Thanksgiving Fun Day! We are looking forward to this time with your children to celebrate Thanksgiving. There will be three 45-minute rotations for the children on Tuesday (B Day Students) or Wednesday (A Day Students). We have been studying Thanksgiving all month and working on having the students identify people and things they are thankful for! We are looking forward to showing you some of their Mayflower Pilgrim Patterns and their Thankful Turkeys!

November is Rolling In...

This coming week we will be doing a lot of learning.  In reading street we will continue our study on how animals and plants are unique.  We will be working on the sound of Ss.  Currently the children have learned the sounds m, t, a, and now s.  In addition to know the sounds in isolation, we have been working on putting these sounds together to make words.  Children should be able to blend (saying the sounds to form the word) and read the following words: mat, tam, sat, and sam.  When practicing blending with your child, have your child say the sounds slowly without stopping (mmmmmmaaaaaaat).  Furthermore, children should also be able to read the sight words: I, am, have, little, to, a, the, is.  In addition, please continue to practice letter identification with your child. Many children are doing extremely well with this skill and some need to continue to practice.  I will be sending home your child's October alphabet assessment on Wednesday and Thursday!

In math, we are continue to work on counting and comparing numbers.  Children will work on counting a specific set of objects and identifying the corresponding numbers.  I will also be asking various questions to the children to work on comparing and ordering.  We have been working a lot on this skill to develop a solid foundation of number sense.  Research shows this foundation will make it easier when we begin to add and subtract in the spring.

Since November is upon us I will be sending home a new homework calendar.  Please keep this safe as it has all of our sight words and math activities to complete at home during the month.  In addition, please continue to complete the Family Ties sheet as this corresponds to what we are doing in the classroom.  I am seeing a lot of progress from the children who are completing these quick activities at home.  It is important to continue this practice since children are at school only 2 or 3 days a week.

Exciting Week...

This week we will be working on the letter sound /a/ as in apple, ant, and ax. The children will begin to develop the understanding of decoding simple words, such as, tam, mat, and am. As you are at home working you can show your child these letters and have them begin saying the sounds. You can place the letters m, a, and t on a card and mix them up and have your child say the appropriate sound. This is the beginning skill to decoding words. In addition, please continue to work on letter identification with your child. I am in the process of assessing the children and to obtain an AP for first quarter your child will need to be able to identify 13 uppercase letters and 13 lowercase letters. You may have noticed on Wednesday or Thursday your child has been bringing home a book with letters, sounds, and a story. This is what we use in our reading groups during the week. Your child should be able to show you how he or she can read the letters, sounds, words, and sentences. You can have your child be the teacher and teach you how we complete the booklet in the classroom. This is a great way for your child to take ownership and show you what they are learning.

 In math, we are continuing to work with counting a set of objects. We are going to be working on tagging. This is when you touch each piece you are counting. This allows children not to count the same object twice. This is a common mistake when children have to count a set of objects. All children have to be able to count to 50 at the end of the second quarter; therefore, we are working on counting to 20. You can help by having your child count at home. This is great in the car, at the grocery store, at home while you are cooking, etc. We will also carve a pumpkin on Wednesday and Thursday. We are going to use the seeds to count and explore the inside of a pumpkin. We will take measurements of various pumpkins and order them by size. 

The quarter ends on Nov. 4th; therefore, I will be completing all the final assessments. I want to thank you for all of your help thus far this year. I have seen a lot of growth in all the children! I look forward to continuing to work together to make this a successful year!

Calendar Fun...

When you go into many classrooms, especially early childhood classrooms, you will find a time set aside to study the calendar. This time is spent in many various ways throughout the country. I spend my time working with the calendar in various ways. I like to call my time "Morning/Afternoon Meeting." We spend the time figuring out what today, tomorrow, and yesterday is on the calendar and we identify the numbers. We also play mystery number, where I take a number off the calendar and the children have to figure out what the missing number. In the later part of the year we mix the calendar up and the children have to put it back together. This allows us to work on ordering numbers. Some teachers like to add a day each day to the calendar; however, I feel different about this. My view on this practice is: you never see a partial calendar, when you look at the calendar you always see the entire month. I want this practice to be in my room because it helps us plan and helps the children develop a sense of time. At the conclusion of this short time we sing the Days of the Week and the Months of the Year. Check out our You Tube channel and watch the children singing "Days of the Week," I am sure you will recognize the tune...I am apologizing in advance if it gets stuck in your head!

2 Dice and Some Adding...

Today we worked on rolling two dice and counting the numbers together. I thought it would be a lot of fun to tape a few students completing the activity. We watched the video in class and talked about what happened. The children noticed how each of the pairs sat next to each other and how they were helping each other counting and writing. I was amazed how the children double checked their work and how they were really thinking about the math they were doing. It was fantastic listening to the children talk about the activity afterward. I wish I had taped that part too!

Enjoy...

AM

PM

We Are Beginning to Add...

This week we are beginning to explore how numbers can be joined together and create a new number. We are in the early stages of addition. We are not writing out number sentences yet, but we are playing various games where we are taking two numbers and counting them together. We have played a game "Top-It." This game is like "War" where you turn over two cards and count the numbers together and who ever has the highest amount wins (you can always change the game and play who has the lowest amount wins). We also played a game where you roll two dice and record the number you get. This is a fun game where children work on number writing, adding numbers together, and analyzing the data. The children are doing a fantastic job in the early stages of math. Two students in the afternoon were able to discover why the recording sheet did not list the number one. They came to the conclusion since you were playing the game with 2 dice, you can not roll and record the number one. If you had two ones you would have to record the number 2. It was awesome thinking!

Gingerbread Week...

We are beginning one of my favorite units this week, Gingerbread (the other ones occur in January and May). In Literacy we will be reading "The Gingerbread Man" and other gingerbread stories. We will be working on sequencing and then comparing/contrasting the various stories. In math we will be working with nonstandard measurement, relative position (above, under, over, across, etc.), and 3-D dimensional objects. On Friday we will make gingerbread houses. Your child will bring home their house on Friday too and you may display it at your home for the holidays. You should have received a pink sheet detailing our project. To make the project a success we need your help in supplying some materials; however, this is optional for you to send in the items. We are in need of graham crackers, small candies, and frosting. I circled a specific item for your child to bring in to make sure we had a enough of everything; however, you are more than welcome to help supply other items as well. I know the kids will be excited to make the houses! Thank you in advance for your help and as always thank you for everything you do!

3-D Fun...

The children this past week had the chance to explore 3-D shapes and then had the opportunity to build 3-D shapes. The children had a great time using marshmallows to build this shapes. The children had great discussion on the difference between 2-D and 3-D. The children learned 2-D shapes are flat and are on paper; whereas, 3-D shapes are objects you can feel and have sides and can put in your hands. This allowed the children to have a concrete definition of the difference between the two. We are going to go into the similarities and differences between 2-D and 3-D. For example, we will look at a square and a cube. I look forward to listening to the discussions we have.

Shape Fun...

This past week we have been working on identifying 2-Dimensional shapes. The children have to be able to recognize circle, rectangle, square, triangle, and hexagon. The children are doing a fantastic job recognizing them. We went on a shape hunt around the school to see what shapes we noticed on the building. We were able to find windows that were rectangles and squares. We even saw the circle window on top of the building. We noticed the bricks were rectangles and a metal piece that looked like a diamond, but we were smart kindergartners and knew it was a square standing on its point. We made shape posters by looking through magazines and looking for a particular shape. The children worked as a team at their tables to complete the posters (I will say they did an AWESOME job working together)! We challenged the children to look for hexagons and I was amazed on the objects they found in the magazines. The children were able to find snowflakes, beehives, and a game that were all in the shape of a hexagon! We are moving into 3-Dimensional shapes and will notice the similarities and differences of the objects!