Week in Review--Plants Two

Reading:

Our CAFE strategy this week was focused on Monitor and Clarify. The Monitoring/Clarifying strategy teaches students to recognize when they don't understand parts of a text and to take necessary steps to restore meaning. Monitoring/Clarifying helps students to focus their attention on the fact that there may be reasons why the text is difficult to understand. Students can be taught to ask questions, reread, restate, and visualize making the text more comprehensible. When reading aloud with your child, actively discuss things that don’t quite make sense or purposely read something incorrectly and have your child help you monitor and clarify that part of the reading. A few other tips when practicing this strategy at home could be:

• Stop and think about what you have already read.
• Reread.
• Adjust your reading rate: slow down or speed up.
• Try to connect the text to something you read in another book, what you know about the world, or to something you have experienced.
• Visualize.
• Reflect on what you have read.
• Use print conventions (keywords, bold print, italicized words, and punctuation).
• Notice patterns in the text structure

This week our word family focus was on contractions. We focused on a specific type of contraction each day. The main three we focused on this week were “n’t, ‘s and ‘ll”. We built words and even completed a Google Slide where sometimes the words were put together as a contraction and we had to guess what two words made it up or the opposite the words were not a contraction and we had to put them together to build a contraction.  

Our vocabulary words this week went with the book Zinnian’s Flower Garden.  We loved learning all about the words abundant, arrange, pesky, inspects, measures, gather.

Our new sight words: give, want

**Be sure to keep the white sight word cards from week to week and continue to practice all of them as new ones are sent home every week.

Our Poem of the Week:

iPad Fun:

Reading

• iMotion: We used one of our new favorite apps this week, iMotion, to create a Play-Doh claymation iMotion movie of a plant life cycle! It was so exciting to add the different parts of the plant, sunshine and water and to show it step by step and then put it together in a movie!
• iMovie: Later in the week, students took their Play-Doh claymation video and voice recorded what was happening in the plant life cycle using iMovie!
• Puppet Pals:: Second round of iPad choice this week, students used a new app where they chose two characters and acted out a puppet play with them discussing ways to keep the Earth healthy and clean.
• Reading Eggs/QR Books: Third round all students completed lessons in Reading Eggs and/or listened to stories on “tape” using QR codes inside picture books.

Math

• Book Creator: This week students used the app Book Creator on their own by adding a journal entry of the activity number of the day! We have been doing number of the day as a whole class since the first week of school and they are now experts and are able to do this on their own! They rolled a dice to find their number, wrote the number, the number word, drew the dice, tally marks, number of shapes and number line! They finished the activity by recording their voice explaining their thinking and what they did with the number of the day.
• Number Frames: We reviewed our ways to make ten this week using the app Number Frames. Students filled in various amounts in a ten frame and wrote the addition sentence to go along with it.

Writing:

Writer’s Workshop this week, we continued to practice writing a list and we learned how to write a letter. We started off by writing a letter to another classroom and learned all of the parts of a letter. We learned who we could write letters to here at school and at home. We also learned how a letter can be turned into a card. We decorated the front of a card and wrote a letter to someone on the inside. We are all a buzz in kindergarten this week writing away with our new writing choices!

Math:

Math this week was focused on reviewing our previously learned 4th nine weeks skills. We reviewed ways to make ten, addition/subtraction stories and showing numbers in more than one way with composing and decomposing. We used iPads, dry erase boards, math tools and more to help us with our reviewing!

Content:

This week was all about PLANTS...week two!

• Monday--We made our own classroom greenhouses where we put a wet cotton ball and a bean seed inside. We will watch them grow over the next couple of weeks!
• Tuesday--We completed the parts of a plant page.
• Wednesday--We filled in a paper about 4 ways we can help keep the Earth healthy and clean.
• Thursday--We made a picture of the Earth using watercolor markers, a coffee filter and spray water bottles!
• Friday--We shared our Puppet Pal and iMotion creations with each other!

Social Emotional Learning (SEL):

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.

This week’s SEL focus was learning about GROWING UP. We started off the week by discussing what things we know that grown ups do and what we are excited about doing when we become an adult. We also talked about how we have to stay in school and learn every day, follow rules and get along with others in order to be an adult who is able to do all of those things. We talked about what we can do now that adults do and we can help them. We have several jobs even as 5 and 6 year olds that grown ups do every day too! We are excited about growing up and learning more responsibilities and becoming productive citizens!

A few discussion questions to talk with your child at home about this topic:

-Who is something you do that helps at home?

-What are you excited about being able to do when you are a grown up?

-What do you want to be when you grow up? Why?

ABC Countdown to Summer Highlights:

H-Hat Day

I-Ice Cream Day

J-Joke Day

K-Kick Off Our Shoes Day (forgot to get pics this day)

L-Lollipop Day

PRACTICE AT HOME:

Have your child write a letter to a family member or friend and take then through the process of mailing the letter out in the mail to that person!

Next Week:

• In reading we will focus on “Retell a Story in Order”
• In writing we will continue learning about writing a letter and learn to write a card and respond to a picture.
• In math we will learn about telling time!
• Our theme next week is all about ZOO Animals..

 

Important Dates/Information:

**Go to our classroom webpage if you want to see important dates on a calendar! I will update this classroom calendar as dates and events come about.

• 4/19 ABC Countdown to Summer Begins! Be sure to keep your calendar handy and/or check our classroom calendar on our school website to be in the “know” of what letter and celebration is each day. You do not need to bring or send anything in unless it is stated on the text message
• 5/9--Field Trip to the Indianapolis Zoo
• 5/11 & 5/12--Mary Lou’s with Mom
• 5/17-Talent Show
• 5/22--Kindergarten Graduation 10AM
• 5/23-Field Day
• 5/24--LAST DAY OF SCHOOL