A Week of Winter

The chilly weather may have kept us indoors all week but that didn't stop Room 5 from enjoying the winter season!

Warming Our Hearts

It's hard to believe we've been in school for almost 100 days. To commemorate the occasion , Kindergarten has decided to challenge themselves to perform 100 acts of kindness by the 100th day of school. Do you think we can do it?! Stay tuned to find out!

Jan Brett

This week's read alouds were all written and illustrated by Jan Brett. The students loved her fun winter tales and finding Jan Brett's very own pet hedgehog in each of her books! 

Check out more titles by Jan Brett at the library.

   W

Time on Learning

Fundations:

We have finished ALL 26 letters of the alphabet. Our final two letters were Z and Qu. 

Ask your child why Q is a "chicken" letter?

 

Our second unit will focus on sounding/ "tapping" our words and reviewing Uppercase letters. 

You will also hear your child start to talk about Trick words, which are sight words.  Sight words and trick words are words which cannot be sounded out but rather memorized. We will incorporate these in our reading groups, morning meeting, center work, and later in our tic-tac-toe boards. 

Addition

Topic 7 in the Envisions math program introduced concepts of joining groups. Students learning basic concepts of adding groups together to find out the sum or number of objects there are "all together".  They practiced reading a number sentence with words and with symbols. They understand a plus sign means "and"  while the equal sign indicates the sum or "same as". 

-Students are to learn addition facts within 5. We revisit addition in our math program but to practice our early skills you will see addition math facts sent home on flash cards to practice with your child.  

-Ask your child to show you the hand signs for plus and equal! 

-We tried out some math centers including "Math Around The Room".  These are task cards hidden around the room for students to find, compute, and record.  I think it will certainly become a routine in our math time. 

Next week we introduce subtraction!! 

Guided Reading & Centers

Guided Reading groups started this week with introductions and setting a purpose. Students learned what to do, how to act, and expectations for when they are in a reading group. Students will read in a small leveled group to build upon  fluency, comprehension, decoding skills, and more! More information about Guided Reading to come! 

Centers are the activities students complete when they are not in a guided reading group. Some of these included:

-Read to Self

-Word Work

-Fundations Practice 

-Writing (Persuasive Letters)

-Write around the room

-Art: Hedgehog Paperplates and designing winter hats

-Poetry: The Mitten

-Literacy Games

Reminders

-Please remember to have your child wear winter coats, gloves/mittens, and hats everyday to school.  If there is snow on the ground and your child would like to play in the snow; children will need boots, snowpants, a winter coat, gloves/mittens, and a hat in order to do so.  Students who do not have ALL of these items will not be able to play in the snow, but will still go out for recess.

-Our next field trip is scheduled for January 29th at the Discovery Museum in Acton. Please let me know ASAP if you'd like to volunteer. All volunteers must be CORIed and attend a confidentiality meeting. 

- There will be no extra practice pages sent home next week due to the short week (no school Monday January 18th). You will see tic-tac-toe boards sent home the week of January 25, including practice addition facts! We appreciate all of your support at home to help your child succeed in the classroom.

Snapshots!