Thank you to all who supported our happy day in Kindergarten today! From families who sent in treats for the class, to all the visitors who were able to attend our party/costume parade--it was a great day! If you weren't able to attend, don't worry! I took a lot of pictures! And, every child was ready with a costume, which was wonderful!
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As always, it was a busy and productive week! We had a lot of fun too, of course. As I wrote in the note sent home yesterday, we did not get off to a consistent start with sharing. This was due to a very different schedule many days this week, which I did not think about when deciding to start sharing this week We will be back on track next week, with the Friday people each sharing on a day Monday-Thursday since there is no school on Friday. Sorry about the change--but if you helped your child prepare for this week's share, there is nothing needed for next week! Please remember, though, sharing is really meant to be done verbally. It's OK to bring something small like a photo or drawing, but that is not at all necessary. NWEA: Students completed the Reading and Math MAP-Common Core assessments on the Chromebooks on Wednesday and Thursday. This is a district-mandated assessment. We were fortunate to have excellent and diligent helpers from Mrs. Hibbard's 5th grade classroom to help students navigate on the Chromebook. Our students are pretty adept at using this device, but there were some aspects that were new to them. It was a long assessment, but students persisted and did their best! If you child was absent on either day, they will make up the test next week. Note: we did not refer to it as a test for fear of making students unnecessarily anxious about it. I simply referred to it as our "computer work." Students will take this assessment officially in December and May. Math As described in a previous blog post, math stations are in full swing. Students are becoming more independent with completing station activities, which has allowed me to start working with students in small groups to better meet individual needs. We are currently in the Counting and Comparing unit of our Investigations Math program. Students are practicing being accurate counters, writing numerals correctly, showing numbers on a 10-frame, comparing numbers, and understanding what numbers mean (number sense). Math stations are popular, as they give students a chance to use familiar math tools, explore math concepts using online games (via the Chromebooks), and explore new math materials. As we progress through the school year, more choices will be embedded in each math station, which is always a welcome thing for kindergarten students!
Word Study Our letters of focus were Ii and Jj, which is a bit behind what is indicated on our letter/sight word calendar. We also practiced sight words me and my. Please practice these sight words with your child at home. Making a simple set of flash cards to review whenever you have a spare few minutes is one way to help students commit these words to memory. So far our sight words have been: I, a, the, and, see, can, me, my, is, in. Some parents shared that their children are starting to notice and read these words when reading books together! Yay! Your child should be bringing letter and sight word mini-books home regularly. Reading these together is a great way to reinforce the learning we do at school. I will post an update about our Reading and Writing Workshops next week. Fun with Reading Buddies Since we won't see our reading buddies on Halloween (no school Oct. 31), we did a spooky Halloween project together on Friday. Our Q-Tip skeletons were inspired by the book Skeleton Hiccups by Margery Cuyler. They will be hanging in the hall next week. It was great to have helping hands of 2nd/3rd grade students for this project! There is, of course, a lot more to tell about our week, but this covers some of the highlights. Students are working hard and learning a lot! I know I'm exhausted! I hope everyone enjoys this gorgeous weekend.
In preparation for conferences, I prepared a one-page document to summarize the learning goals in literacy and math for the 1st trimester of kindergarten. I wrote these in "kid-friendly" language, much like the goals I write each day for students at school. Learning goals help make the purpose of each lesson clear for students and are an important part of our learning routine in Kindergarten. I will devote another blog post to that subject soon. I will share your child's progress towards these goals during the October conference. Since our conferences are spread over a 3-week time span, I thought some of those with later conferences might like to see the learning goals document sooner. We still have over a month left in the current trimester, and I feel certain that students will make substantial growth in that time. Practice with these skills at home is important, so thank you for all you do! Students will be assessed on progress towards these goals at the end of November, and report cards will be sent home December 5th.
We are now fully into our station routines for both literacy and math. Our math station time consists of four stations, which are named according to the acronym MATH. M=Meet with the Teacher, A=All by Myself, T=Technology Time, and H=Hands On. Students rotate to two of the four stations each day, which means I meet with each small group of students 2-3 times per week for targeted math skill work. The 'All by Myself' station will include many activities, all of which should be independent for students to do. This week, students worked on counting and number formation. The Hands-On station includes exploration of our math tools and practice with games that are familiar to all students. The Technology station right now is done on Chromebooks. Students can visit online math games through ABCYa.com. Soon, students will use MobyMax, a website that adapts according to students' strengths and areas of weakness in math. I am working hard to get iPads for our classroom too, as the possibilities with iPads in math (and all subject areas) are staggering! Our literacy stations are known as our "Daily 5." Students are currently going to one station per day, at the end of our Reading/Writing Workshop time. This is a time that I can work with small groups of students and confer with student individually to work on literacy-related skills. Eventually, there will be several choices within each Daily 5 station, and the tasks will be differentiated to meet student needs. Currently, the focus is helping students to work independently in these stations, to ensure small group/1:1 instruction is productive and not interrupted. The Daily 5 stations are Read to Self, Read to Someone, Work on Writing, Word Work, and Listen to Reading. Our Chromebooks are the tool of choice for the Listen to Reading station, as students can access several websites to listen to and watch books read aloud as well as work on a variety of literacy activities on Starfall.com and ABCYa.com. Read to Self is independent reading, Word Work is working on letters/sounds and sight words in a variety of hands-on ways, Work on Writing is working on a variety of writing genres (student selected), and Read to Someone is reading with a buddy (though we have not started this station yet--art station is taking its place).
Our trip to Pahl's Pumpkin Patch in Buckley was a success! We were fortunate with the weather--it was overcast and damp, but it stayed dry. This was a relief, since Tuesday was pouring rain all day long. Thank you to the MANY parents who volunteered to go along with us. Having you there made all the difference! Students rotated through four stations--farm animals, corn/hay mazes, pumpkin picking, and snack. A great time was had by all! Here are some photos from our adventure. We are cruising on through our math curriculum, with a focus on lots of counting and number recognition. Building number sense is crucial at this age--a solid understanding of numbers and what they mean. For example, many children can count rotely well beyond 20, but don't necessarily understand the quantity represented by each number. So, we are working on putting it all together--recognizing the numerical representation of 5, being able to show five with a drawing of five things, count five objects, know the number that is one more and one less, and so on. (Five is just an example--we will focus on numbers 0-30 in kindergarten.) Students are also practicing number formation, which can be challenging! I emphasize a "growth mindset"--persevering even when things are tough and having an "I'll try" vs. "I can't" attitude. Data collection and analysis is a focus of the Investigations curriculum, and we kicked off this study with some apple data collection. We sorted by color had then taste tested and graphed which color was our favorite. Delicious! Math questions I posed included: "Which color apple do we have the most/least of?" "How many ______ apples are there?" "How many more red apples are there than green?" "How many apples are there altogether?" I wish all data collection could involve food! :) |