Week of Sept. 26-29

Hopefully you heard many wonderful things this week that demonstrate the amount of learning your child is experiencing.
We made it through picture day with smiles for the camera!
Students are beginning to feel comfortable in class and seem to be interacting much more between peers. This is so good to see in kindergarten! I try to allow for lots of talking time for this reason. My hope is that students will learn quickly when it's a good time to chat and when it's a good time to listen. Something I say often to my students is "If you're looking and listening then your brain is learning!" I honestly feel that the toughest obstacle between your child and learning is the listening. After many years of teaching it is a clear pattern of struggling students(in any grade) when listening is not happening on a regular basis.

I hope the photos give you a better understanding of what our days/learning looks like. I'd like to think we're having oodles of fun learning together! Of course those cute faces in the photos are sure to make you smile too.

Thanks for reading along and being involved in your child's school life.

We repeated our shared readings of "Brown Bear", "I See Colors" and other color big books. We also added the big book "1,2 Buckle My Shoe" to connect with our word study on rhymes. Students extended learning from shared readings with a Brown Bear individual book that will go home this coming week, an I See Colors book where students had to match a sentence with "I see ___ (a color) to glue on the correct color page. Then they cut out pictures from a magazine to go on each page. These went home Friday. Another extension activity from a word study on letters making words was "My September Word Book" which should have gone home. I modeled this on the overhead Elmo projector and then students chose words from a September theme word poster. A focus on the lesson was being able to copy and correctly write the lowercase letters in order. Students drew a picture on each page to help them read the book. Please have your child read all three of these simple, repetitive texts (books) throughout the week.

Writer's Workshop:

We began writer's workshop explaining how it was similar to reader's workshops with a whole group mini-lesson, independent work (personal writing practice), and ending with a share of some sort. Some shares are done whole group and others are done throughout the independent work time. It's sort of a teachable moment when a student has a strong example of what we covered in the mini-lesson and it can be shared with the class as a model. It also celebrates what writer's are accomplishing.

Eventually we will be making books which I shared with students. They were very excited to hear this. In one lesson I demonstrated the differences in types of books we read and what would seem reachable for kindergarten writers.

Our first attempt to write was with drawing. We learned that anything we say, we can draw and eventually write and read. You'll find that we do a lot of drawing during our writer's workshops. Students are encouraged to add details to drawings just as they will eventually add details to their writing. Below are a few stories drawn by our kindergartners.

Reader's Workshop:
We used stories that children might relate to such as "Flower Garden", a story about a girl surprising her mom with a lovely flower box as a gift. We talked about how we can make connections to stories (texts) we read. Children also learned the technique of "turn and talk". This has many uses...it is how we encourage students to participate in a group discussion without the pressure of saying it in front of the class. It also allows for less wait time on the carpet when all students have something to share. While I love hearing the many things children have to add to stories and lessons, it becomes a painfully long wait for little ones to listen for every one's turn. Lastly, it's a quick way to allow students to connect with other students sharing ideas.


We hit on a very big lesson on the 3 ways kindergarten students can read . See the chart below. You'll also see photos of popular spots to read in our room.

Below are a few math lessons we had this week:

Beginning this month (October) we create a calendar to practice writing our numbers. You can see that we use a projector (a newer form of the classic overhead projector) and I model each number, talk students through the pencil strokes and walk around to check on progress. This month that takes a lot of patience for students, but the wait time will decrease as students become more fluent with writing numbers. We stop to look at how there are patterns such as teen numbers having 1's first and numbers that say twenty something start with a 2. 2's and 5's are challenging numbers for children to write at this time. Following the number part of the calendar we make a monthly theme related project with our hands to go along. The ghosts on this calendar should resemble a closed finger hand.

Students are sorting coins to match photos on mats. This was tricky for many and we repeated the lesson a second day with more demonstrations to show that we must look closely at the faces on the quarter and nickel. Students are not yet asked to name the coins, just look closely to recognize differences.




We played Trash Can basketball with number recognition with numbers 1 through 27. This was a big hit for a late afternoon math lesson.


















Important Reminder:
Most days before dismissal I bring in coats from our coat rack and lunchboxes from the wagon. I hold these items up and try to fit them with owners...but still many are forgotten daily or not claimed. Please try to put your child's name boldly on all belongings. Also, if your child has forgetfulness with his/her belongings it's a good idea to practice this at home and hold him/her responsible for getting his/her items ready in the morning. As s/he walks out for school ask him/her to stop and check to see if s/he has everything needed.

I have a black cotton jacket with a black layer of ruffle that has been on the coat rack since the first day. I hold it up often and still can't seem to find the owner. Let me know if you think this might belong in your home. It's a girls size small.


Upcoming events:*October 4th: PTA meeting
*October 5th is Count Day for our state.
*October 5th is also the day that the White Lake Fire Department will be here for an assembly
*October 7th - Market Day delivery at Dublin
*October 14th - Dublin's 3rd annual Fun Run
*November 8th- Teacher Professional Development day, no school
*November 17th - No school, parent/teacher conferences