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Friday, September 9, 2016

Weekly News: September 12-16


The class had so much fun tasting apples on Friday.  This Friday, we will be making apple pie as we continue our study on apples. Thank you for signing up on ParentSquare to bring apples! We could not do it without you! 

Electives will begin Monday! If your child is participating in an elective, you may send a lunch to school with him/her on that elective day and lunch supervision will be provided for your children. Kindergarten electives are from 12:50-1:20 and the elective teachers will dismiss your children at 1:20 on the ramp. Please be aware that some electives may last until 1:30, depending on the elective.

Save the Date! We will be having a Kindergarten Parent Workshop on Monday, September 12th. I would like to invite all parents into the classroom on this date from 2:00-3:00 to learn ways to better support your child at home in the areas of foundational reading skills, writing, and math. We will go over our kindergarten goals and common core standards for the year and learn strategies to help your child at home. We will have an additional workshop on Monday, September 19th from 2:00-3:00 for Spanish speaking families with a translator. Childcare will be provided down at the playground for ILCS students on both of these dates. I hope you are able to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity! 

We are so excited to announce that our first field trip is planned! We will be going to Los Rios Ranch in Oak Glenn on Tuesday, October 4th. We will be leaving school by bus at approximately 8:30 in the morning and returning around dismissal at 12:30. The students will get to meet Johnny Appleseed, tour the apple orchards, and even make our very own apple cider! In order for our kindergarten classes to go on this field trip (and all future field trips this year), we are asking for donations to be made to our Dollar A Day program through the school. For this field trip, we are asking for a generous donation of $20 per student. This will help cover the cost of the apple farm, the bus, and the very special kindergarten field trip t-shirt that your child will wear on all field trips this year. Unfortunately, if our kindergarten team does not receive donations, we will not be able to go on this wonderful field trip :(  We are also looking for volunteers to join us and chaperone our field trip. The cost for chaperones is also $7.  If you are interested in chaperoning for our field trip on this day, please email me directly at jcbess@inlandleaders.com. The $7 chaperone fee needs to be paid in cash directly to your child's teacher, not through Dollar a Day. On Friday, September 23rd, we will need to give our final head count to Los Rios Ranch, so if you would like to chaperone, please email me by this date. We apologize for any inconvenience, but siblings and little ones are not allowed on this field trip due to the safety of our kindergarten students you will be chaperoning.  Also, be on the look-out for the field trip permission slip that will be coming home in your child's Take Home Folder as we get closer to our field trip. We are so excited for this excellent field trip with your children! 

Here is the link to donate on Dollar A Day: 

We will be using Dollar A Day monies for ALL field trips. Thank you so much for your support! 

What Are We Learning This Week?:

Sight Words: YOU, AND, IT FRIEND.

Letter Team: WH (like in what and whistle).

Word Family: AT - like in bat, cat, rat, sat, fat, etc.

Reading: We will continue to read books about apples and Johnny Appleseed. We will also read lots of funny books by Mo Willems. Students will continue to read little books in class that include sight words and letter teams. Many of these little books have been coming home with a stamp, which means the student has read the book to me fluently. As students practice reading fluently, these books will continue to come home. Please keep practicing them at home! Last week, we began taking Book Bags home. These will come home every day Monday-Thursday with a book (or a few books) that your child has chosen to practice reading. Please remember that Book Bags must come back to school every day. We are trying to teach the students to "Own Their Actions" and be responsible for their own supplies and homework. 

Writing: We will learn a poem this week that will help us with our penmanship: Some letters are tall, some letters are small, and some letters fall. Please reinforce neat penmanship when writing at home, reminding your children to write within the lines and always start at the top! We will continue learning to put spaces between each word, use an uppercase at the beginning of each sentence with lowercase letters throughout, and use a period at the end. We will continue to use our sight words in our sentences and use our sound chart to help us sound out the words we do not know how to write. Students will each make a writing goal this week. We will go over these writing goals at our Parent Workshop. 

Math: This week we will learn all of our 3D shapes. We will discuss attributes of these 3D solid shapes and learn how many "faces" and vertices are on each shape. Last week, each student was given a math counting and writing goal. We will work hard on these goals every day during our math rounds. We will go over these goals in more detail at our Parent Workshop on Monday. We will continue to practice number identification, number writing, days of the week, months of the year, shapes, and counting on/"Popcorn Counting". 

Leadership: At ILCS this year, we are ROARING. The acronym ROAR stands for Respect self, others, and property, Own your actions, Act safely, and Rise to servant leadership. We will continue to discuss the O in class -  OWN YOUR ACTIONS. We've been talking about being responsible for our own actions and making sure our job gets done. Our goal is to have students take ownership of their own behavior as we all strive to be leaders in our classroom and school. Your child will continue to bring home their "check in" sheets each week. Students have been “checking in” with themselves and their teacher throughout the day on their behavior at school: if they are GREEN (I am doing a great job Roaring today!), YELLOW (I am doing well, but I think I can do even better!), RED (I will choose to change my behavior). Most students have been choosing their color all by themselves and I have been so proud of their honesty and their willingness to change their behaviors throughout the day. I have also been giving away a LOT of Roar tickets. Roar tickets are received when a student is caught "Roaring" (respecting and owning their actions). Every Friday, Roar tickets are chosen to go to the treasure box.

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