Week in Review--Community Helpers

Reading:

In reading this week, we learned about the setting in a story. We learned that the setting is where the story takes place and where the characters are in the story. We read several community helper books and talked about the setting in the story and how sometimes the setting changes in the story.   

We also learned all about the -ad family. We built words in the -ad family, we went on a word hunt where we chopped the sounds up in the word and found it in a pile of other -ad words and we practiced rhyming with all of the words in the -ad family.

Our vocabulary words this week went with the story Good Morning Digger. We loved learning all about the words cement, early, vacant, community, weeds and welding. On Thursday, we shared our creations that we made during iPad reading time using ChatterPix where we took a picture of a community helper and described his/her job using the app! We did this to review what a community is and who some of the people are that live in a community.

Our new sight words: like, and

**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

• ChatterPix: This week we used the app ChatterPix to take a picture of a community helper and describe his/her job using the app and recording their voice.
• Sky Writer: This week students practiced writing our first nine weeks sight words using the app Sky Writer. This app takes your writing and then has an airplane come out when you are finished to rewrite what your wrote using an airplane’s jet stream!
• Students also continued to practice Reading Eggs, EPIC and QR listening books.

Math

• Numbers Pizza: This week students use an app called Numbers Pizza. This app is filled with counting practice, number recognition and more. They LOVED using this app!
• Students also continued using Book Creator and creating their own math journals this week. We will complete a few entries in our math journals as a whole group for a couple more weeks and then students will enter their own entries in independently.

Writing:

Writer’s Workshop this week focused on using shapes and lines when drawing our illustrations as well as using our sight words to create and write sentences. We always should write our sight words correctly, but then we learned that when writing unknown words we can stretch that word out and write the beginning sound we hear and write down any other sounds we hear when we say the word really slowly!

Math:

Our math vocabulary word this week was pattern. We learned all about different types of patterns. We practiced patterns that had two colors and even practiced apps that have more than two colors! We name our patterns using letters. We call the patterns ABAB patterns or ABC, AAB, ABB and so on! We will continue to practice patterns throughout the school year.

Content:

This week was all about COMMUNITY HELPERS!

• Monday--We had a community helper come into visit us today. We had a veterinarian visit and talk to us about her job helping animals.
• Tuesday--We had a community helper come into visit us today. We had a police officer visit us and talk about his job helping the community. .
• Wednesday--We had a community helper come into visit us today. We had our school nurse come and talk to us about her job as a nurse.
• Thursday--We completed a community helper book and talked about all of the jobs in the book.
• Friday--We shared all of our community helper people and shared what job we want to be when we grow up!

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 is all about having EMPATHY. We started the week off by watching the next video on Class Dojo about our emotions and sometimes we can feel stuck in a maze when we are not feeling very happy. We then continued the week by reading a feelings book and acting out each of the feelings throughout the book. On Wednesday and Thursday we read a story called Wemberly Worried and wrote a list of things she was worried about and things we worry about. We talked about why things worry us and that it is okay to worry but it’s also important to learn from those worries that sometimes our worrying is proven to show that there isn’t a need to worry at all. On Friday, we finished the week off by going on a feelings hunt around the school. We talked about how when we show empathy we use our eyes, ears and heart to show we are recognizing how others feel. We walked around the school and completed a chart that had several feelings on it and would circle one of the feelings if we saw someone around the school showing that feeling. When we got back to our room, we shared the feelings we noticed.

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

--Do you think your actions can cause feelings in other people? Name a time you think your actions affected someone else.

--Mojo learned about The Maze! What is The Maze? And, what does it prevent us from seeing?

--Ask a grownup in your life to describe a time they have been in The Maze.

PRACTICE AT HOME:

Have your child create and complete patterns using items around your house!

Next Week:

• In reading we will practice syllables and text features.
• In writing we will continue Writer’s Workshop writing sentences and writing all the sounds we hear in a word!
• In math we will learn the vocabulary word “sort”.
• Our theme next week is all about Fire Safety!

 

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.

• 10/14 End of 1st Nine Weeks
• Week of 10/17-10/21 Parent/Teacher Conferences (If you do not know when your conference time is, please contact me ASAP)
• 10/26--Grandparent Fair 10-11 AM (please complete the form and/or message me back on the event on text that I sent out)

Week in Review--Pumpkins

Reading:

In reading this week, we learned about characters in books. Each student brought in a picture of their favorite character from a book at home. We shared why they loved that character and what makes that character special. We learned that characters are the WHO in stories. Sometimes characters are people but other times they can be animals or even objects! All characters regardless if they are real or fantasy need to do something in the story, they talk, move and have a role in the story to be called a character.  

We also learned all about the -an family. We built words in the -an family, we went on a word hunt where we chopped the sounds up in the word and found it in a pile of other -an words and we practiced rhyming with all of the words in the -an family.

We learned a new choice for Word Work this week! Roll A Word is a new option that students can choose to complete during independent Daily 5 work time. Students roll a dice and whatever number it lands on matches a word they then write on the page!

Our vocabulary words this week went with the story The Biggest Pumpkin Ever. We loved learning all about the words contest, discovered, hummed, fertilized, gathered and admired. On Thursday, we created a book in Book Creator to review two of our words. We learned how to change the background on the page, how to use the video tool and how to save a completed book.

Our new sight words: my, up

**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

• Pic Collage: Pic Collage is an app where you can put multiple pictures together in one spot. Students took three pictures of three different things and then labeled the beginning sound they hear in the word. They then saved the picture to the camera. We will be learning how to send these saved assignments and upload them to Google Classroom soon!
• Phonics Ninja: This week students played the game Phonics Ninja to practice letter sounds and blended letter sounds.
• Students also continued to practice Reading Eggs, EPIC and QR listening books.

Math

• This week students continued to practice 1,2,3 Ninja and Animal Math. Both apps have students practicing recognizing numbers, shapes, counting, patterns and more!
• Students also tried out using Book Creator and creating their own math journals this week. We will complete a few entries in our math journals as a whole group for a couple more weeks and then students will enter their own entries in independently.

Writing:

Writer’s Workshop has officially been launched and we are so excited! We learned all about how writer’s workshop time is set up. We always start with a whole group mini-lesson, the students then go write-write-write and we finish with a few students sharing what they wrote that day. Our first few lessons we practiced illustrating pictures, labeling pictures using beginning sounds and by the end of the week we were writing sentences using our sight words and beginning sounds for unknown words. We learned that if we are stuck and are not sure what to write about, we can use our “WHAT?” can we write about chart to help brainstorm ideas. We also learned that we can write wherever we want in the room that fits us best as a writer, where to find crayons that we might need and what to do with dull pencils! We are off to a GREAT start and I can’t wait to see where this group is headed with their writing this year!

Math:

Our math vocabulary word this week was subitizing. We learned that subitizing means to look at something and know it right away. We are practicing looking at various groups of objects and knowing how many are there without having to count out each one. We are practicing this idea in several different ways and one way we are practicing is by using dice, tally marks, ten frames and objects!

Students also learned two new choices to use during Math Daily 3! We learned all about sorting by shape, size and color. They are able to practice this skill at a Math by Myself choice. Another idea we practiced and added to a choice this week is counting out objects. When students go to Math With Someone, they can choose to count out links and add them to number cards!

Content:

This week was all about PUMPKINS!

• Monday--We celebrated great behavior for the first few weeks of school and had our first behavior celebration. Students who received 80% or above were able to participate in the bounce house inflatable obstacle course. Next behavior celebration will be raised to 85%!
• Tuesday--We painted paper plate pumpkins.
• Wednesday--We learned about the life cycle of a pumpkin.
• Thursday--We read the story Spookley the Square Pumpkin
• Friday--We completed a Popplet all about what we learned about the character Spookley and we made our own version of Spookley. We made pumpkins that were different colors and different sizes!

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 is all about having EMPATHY. We learned that empathy is a skill that anyone can build and in order to have empathy you have to be aware and respectful of other people’s feelings. We watched the first chapter in Class Dojo’s video series on empathy where Mojo is the director of a play and he gets very angry at the cast members and doesn’t treat them very nicely. We talked about how he should have reacted to his friends in the play when they messed up their lines. We read a story about a new student in school and how that student was nervous and sad about leaving her old home. She didn’t want to talk to anyone and even got angry at other people when they tried talk to her. All she needed was someone to listen to her talk about her feelings and we learned that sometimes it’s important to be a good listener for our friends and not always trying to talk to them, when maybe they need to tell us something important about their feelings.  Another day we played an empathy game where we put ourselves in other people’s shoes by deciding how we think someone else would feel in different types of situations. We also read the story The Pout Pout Fish and learned how sometimes when people are sad, a nice smile or a hug can make them feel better!

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

1. What word describes how Mojo felt? Why did he feel this way? Name a time you felt like Mojo; why did you feel this way?
2. How was Katie feeling in this video? Do you think Mojo knew how she was feeling?
3. Ask a grownup in your life if they have ever felt like Mojo. How did they handle it?

PRACTICE AT HOME:

Have your child draw a picture and label the parts in the picture. We are focusing on keeping our illustrations free from scribble scrabbles and using shapes and real life colors when illustrating.

Next Week:

• In reading we will practice the Setting in a story
• In writing we will continue Writer’s Workshop writing sentences!
• In math we will learn all about patterns!
• Our theme next week is all about Community Helpers!

 

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.

• 10/14 End of 1st Nine Weeks
• Week of 10/17-10/21 Parent/Teacher Conferences (PLEASE RETURN THE YELLOW FORM THAT WAS SENT HOME)
• 10/26--Grandparent Fair 10-11 AM (please complete the form and/or message me back on the event on text that I sent out)

Week in Review--Apples

Reading:

In reading this week, we learned about “Reality vs Fantasy” and rhyming. We talked about the difference between books that are about real topics and real things can happen and things that are fantasy and cannot happen in real life. A few of our favorites are that when animals talk, or do things that people do and when toys move and talk on their own that is fantasy and books about people and animals that teach us something with real life examples, things we could actually DO are real stories. Our focus on rhyming this week was specifically on the “-at” and “-ag” word families. We built and read words in those families and listened for words if they rhymed or if they didn’t rhyme. We will work on rhyming words all year long, rhyming is a skills that helps in both reading and writing.  

We also learned how to “shop” for new books for our book boxes this week. We learned that we first return a book from our book box back to our classroom library, choose a new book and then return leveled books and get new leveled readers. Each student gets to shop for new books one time a week on a specific shopping day. If they are absent on their shopping day, Fridays are reserved for any student who was absent and missed their scheduled shopping day.

Our vocabulary words this week went with the story Apples, Apples, Apples. We loved learning all about apples this week and our vocabulary words fit right in!

Our new sight words: look, it

**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

• QR Codes Listening: This week we used classroom books from our library that have QR codes inside the cover. These codes link to a sound clip that has the story on “tape” for the students to follow along and listen to while holding the book in their hands.
• ABC Magic: We practiced several reading and decoding strategies using the game apps ABC Magic. They are free apps that offer sorting, beginning/ending sounds, rhyming, building words and more!

Math

• This week we practiced 1,2,3 Ninja and Animal Math. Both apps have students practicing recognizing numbers, shapes, counting, patterns and more!

Writing:

This week we FINISHED our focus on writing specific letters in the alphabet. The letters this week were Xx, Kk, and Zz. Everyday we go through an alphabet chart, sing a song all about that specific letter, trace a letter page with the uppercase and lowercase letter and complete another activity or craft that goes along with the letter. We love learning what each new letter will be everyday!  We finished the week with an Alphabet Celebration! We practiced building, tracing, painting and writing all of the letters in the alphabet Aa-Zz at different ABC stations.

Math:

Our math vocabulary words this week were...side and corner. We practiced labeling the 2D shapes we have been working on by labeling the sides and corners. We built shapes this week using GEOboards, talked about shapes of objects in real life and continued to practice the number of sides and corners with a partner playing the shape race game!

Content:

This week was all about APPLES!

• Monday--We came up with words that we knew that describe apples!
• Tuesday--We completed an apple investigation experiment.
• Wednesday--We practiced patterns using different colors of apples.
• Thursday--We learned all about the different stages of an apple tree throughout the year.
• Friday--We had an apple taste test where we tried red, yellow and green apples, apple muffins, apple sauce, apple juice, apple cider and apple pie. Thank you to everyone who donated items for this fun afternoon. Our tummies were stuffed and we loved trying things we haven’t had before!

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 focus was all about The Power of YET. The word YET is so incredibly powerful when we verbalize challenges and things that might be hard for us. We add the word yet to the end of the sentence and it immediately becomes a positive thought and a goal of something we will eventually achieve. Saying the words “I can’t” or “I don’t know how” can be so negative and bring a person down, but when you add the word yet to the end it automatically tells you that might not be able to do that idea right now but you will one day! We completed several activities throughout the week practicing the word YET and listened to the story “The Most Magnificent Thing”. This book was about a little girl who wanted to build the most magnificent thing, but every time she tried to build it, it never turned out the way she wanted it to turn out. She tried and tried again and finally gave up after the 10th time of trying. She looked back at all of the “mistakes” she made and then learned something from each of those mistakes that helped her finally on her 11th try build the project she had in her mind that she wanted to create. It was a great message of not giving up and knowing that you might not learn something the very first time or even the second, third or even longer time you try it...but with persistence you will and can get there!

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

1. Name a time you were afraid to ask for help. Why were you afraid? (Both parent and student should pick a moment to share)
2. How can you improve the phrase "I can't do this?”
3. Think of a time where you just didn't get “it.” What could you do in that situation?

A few students sharing things they can't do...YET!

Something EXTRA:

• We had the author Jerry Pallotta visit our school this week. We have read several of his books and he talked to the kindergarten students about being a writer, how he gets his ideas for writing, how he doesn't always get the writing correct the first time and story telling. It was a great presentation with a lot of laughter!

PRACTICE AT HOME:

Talk about words in the “-at” and “-ag” word families and try to come up with other words that rhyme either with words in those word families or other words that rhyme in general!

Next Week:

• In reading we will practice Name the Characters
• In writing we will begin Writer’s Workshop!
• In math we will learn all about subitizing!
• Our theme next week is all about PUMPKINS!

**DONATION REQUEST**

We are in need of paper plates this next week. We have a few pumpkin crafts that require plates and last week we ended up needing to eat our apple tasting on coffee filters because we were out of plates. If you are able to send in a package of paper plates, that would be so incredibly helpful. Thank you!

 

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.

• 10/14 End of 1st Nine Weeks
• Week of 10/17-10/21 Parent/Teacher Conferences (PLEASE RETURN THE YELLOW FORM THAT WAS SENT HOME)
• 10/26--Grandparent Fair 10-11 AM (more info to come)