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Friday, August 18, 2017

Weekly News: August 21-25


What a great first full week of school! I am the luckiest teacher to have such a great group of students with me and I am excited about our year together. We are having so much fun getting to know one another and adjusting to this crazy little thing called kindergarten :) 

There is always a LOT of information at the beginning of the year. Thank you so much for taking the time to read through our entire post. 

It was wonderful meeting so many of our parents at Back to School Night!  It is so nice to see we have an enthusiastic and very supportive group of parents!  This year will be amazing!! Remember that if you were unable to make Back to School Night, I uploaded our slideshow to ParentSquare so that you do not miss the important information that was discussed. 

Thank you to the parents that signed up to help us out in the morning with Daily Folders. If you are a Daily Folder helper, please grab our Folder Basket down at the tables on the playground and walk it up to class for us! Here are Daily Folder Parents: 

Mondays: Mrs. Chronopoulos
Tuesdays: Mrs. Raef
Wednesdays: 
Thursdays: 
Fridays:

As you can see, we still need help on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings. If you are able to help, please sign up on ParentSquare. We are also in need of two more helpers for our Fun Friday Centers. These volunteers will start sometime in mid September. 

At Back to School Night, I sent home a Sight Word CD with most of our sight word songs. This is a fun way to learn our sight words and reinforce letter identification too. Have your child point to each letter on their flashcards as they sing the letter name and have fun singing! 

You should have also received a note showing you how to download the QR CODE app onto your phone or tablet. Your children will have the opportunity to scan QR codes in the classroom and watch great videos to help with reading, phonemic awareness, penmanship, and math. Every week, some of the papers we are working on in class will come home. Have your child scan those QR codes again and again for practice! They love the videos!  Mrs. Stanley will also post these (AND MORE!) QR Code practice activity pages on Parent Square so you can download them.  This is a great way to reinforce/practice at home!

On Friday your child took his/her first spelling sentence assessment.  Please take some time to go over the spelling sentence with your student and reinforce any errors your child may have made.  We will have a spelling sentence assessment each Friday that will include our current and often previous spelling words.  We are looking for correct spelling, capitalization, and punctuation as well as appropriate spacing between words.  We understand this will take time, but with reinforcement and practice they will all achieve this standard.  Your students are off to a great start!!

On Friday your child also took his/her first sight word/letter/letter team reading assessment.  Please take some time to also go over this assessment with your child.  We will have this assessment each Friday and it will include current as well as past words, letters, and letter teams.  These quick weekly assessments are a great way to check in on your student’s progress and to monitor where support may be needed.  Thank you so much for your support!!


On Friday your child also came home with their Daily Math paper. On Friday we use the Daily Math as a quick “check in” assessment for the math standards covered during the week.  On Fridays you will see a score recorded on this paper indicating how many problems your child missed on the assessment.  During the week we work together to complete the problems and reinforce these standards with hands on activities during our math rounds.  On Fridays your child will have the opportunity to complete this activity on their own to demonstrate mastery or needed support of a standard.  Again, please take a few minutes to go over any missed problems.  Thank you!!

Save the Date for our Parent Workshop on Wednesday, September 13th from 6:00-7:00. We will meet in our classroom and go over all of our kindergarten standards/goals for the year, exactly what they mean, and strategies for how you can help your child with these goals at home. 

There is no school on Monday, September 4th due to the Labor Day holiday. Enjoy the time off with your families!


What Are We Learning This Week?:

Sight Words: is, the, me, or.

Letters:i, t, h, m, o, r, p

Letter Team: th (we are learning that TH has two different sounds - a hard sound, like in MOTHER and THE, and a soft sound, like in THUMB and WITH). 

Word Family: ap (cap, tap, rap, etc.)

Reading: We are learning the vowels! Ask your child about our special vowel song and what sounds the vowels can make! We are learning that each vowel can make 2 sounds - short and long. We are also learning the parts of a book, including title, author, illustrator, and title page. You can help at home by having your child point to each part of the book before you read. We are reading a new class book this week titled, "More Shapes". We will learn various shapes and colors as we practice reading our sight words of the week. Students will continue one-to-one matching, and we will learn a few more reading strategies, including, "Get your mouth ready for the first sound", "Know the Letter Sounds" and "Stretch out the sounds”.

Writing: We are learning that writing is just telling on paper. Some of us are "telling" using pictures and labels. Some of us are already starting to tell with words and sentences. No matter where we are at, we are ALL learning that our ABC Sound Chart helps us to identify sounds/letters in words. (You will also find the ABC Sound Chart on your child's Take Home Folder!!) This week, we are also practicing writing our name with an uppercase ONLY at the beginning. Please reinforce this at home.

Math: We will practice number identification, number writing, days of the week, months of the year, and shapes. This week, every student received their very first "Math Goal". Some of our goals are "I can write my numbers to 10" and some of us are working on "I can count to 30". We will also focus on identifying what number comes next without having to go back to start counting at 1. In class, we call it "Popcorn Counting". For example, if I ask a student to count on from the number 7, I would like them to say "8, 9, 10" and the numbers just pop out of our brain like popcorn. We sing a song about this called: Popcorn Count ....

Popcorn Count (Popcorn Count)
It’s what it’s all about! (It’s what it’s all about!)
It helps us add up numbers (It helps us add up numbers)
Really Quick!
Lickety Split!


Leadership: The first few weeks of school, we really talked about having a growth mindset and how to help our brain grow, even when something is really hard. We read several books about how mistakes help you grow and how to NOT give up! We even wrote a Class Promise together that we will read every morning: 

Fact 1: We are smart! 
Fact 2: We can get it!
Fact 3: We belong here! 
And 4: We won't forget it!


PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO READ THE ENTIRE HOMEWORK POST BELOW!!!! 

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