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!

Happy New Year!

Room 5 is Back in Full Swing! 

Our first week in the new year was filled with a new writing unit on persuasion, a school wide assembly, and a visit from Penny and Pearl the Hedgehogs! 

 Monday morning student came into the building refreshed and ready to learn! Everyone did a great job settling back into our classroom routines and expectations. 

--In Fundations, we learned the letters x and y. Only two more until we have completed the whole alphabet! This also means next week will be our last week for letter formation practice pages. 

*Keep an eye out for our new Tic-Tac-Toe Home Connections. They will included a variety of skills including math fluency, sight words, reading, life skills, and more! 

--In math we are learning about joining groups and addition. We will learn about the plus and equal sign next week and then move onto subtraction.  

Writing

This week was filled with a lot of writing. Our class did a fantastic job learning about letter writing and persuasive writing. The lessons this week required students to write their own letters to Mrs. Pavlicek asking for a class pet. The students came up with a wide range of animals they felt would be suitable for the classroom: rabbit, snake, lizard, hamster, turtle, and fish. I can't wait to see what Mrs. Pavlicek decides...What class pet will we get?

Speaking of Mrs. Pavlicek....Check out the pictures below from the hedgehog presentation. 

Hedgehog Show!

Mrs. Pavlicek introduced her discussion on Hedgehogs by talking about Jan Brett's book, The Mitten. 

We learned about How Hedgehogs protect themselves by either rolling in a ball and making sounds to warn off predators.

Mrs. Pavlicek walked the Hedgehog around to first just look. 

Pearl is 2 years old

Then...We got a chance to pet her! 

Check out a video of us as Hedgehogs trying to protect ourselves from predators like a bear:

Free Play!!

Kitchen/Dramatic Play

Blocks

Coloring & Book Making

Rhyming Buckets and Building 

Whole School Assembly

Mrs. Greene, our guidance counselor, hosted a school-wide assembly to discuss a new component of our school wide behavior program. She explained how groups of students, across grade levels, can earn a BE THE ONE Certificate. Once the school accumulates a certain amount of certificates, the whole school will earn a reward.  

To demonstrate how Fox Hill works as a team and works as ONE; we made a rainstorm. 

Check out the video below to see it in action!

It actually sounds like a real rainstorm!!

One Last Reminder...

Favorite Toy Photo

Dear Parents,

 

The students of Room 5 are learning to persuade. Watch out! They can be VERY convincing! Our first task was to write a letter persuading Mrs. Pavlicek, at the science, for a class pet. We worked together to brainstorm, research, and formulate strong reasons to support our demands. Next week, students will work to write a persuasive letter about one of their favorite topics...TOYS!!

We ask if you could assist your child in selecting one toy/stuffed animal they believe is the best and take a photo.  We will be writing on the topic all week, therefore a picture would be preferable over bring in and leaving a toy in school for 5 days.

You can take the picture on your phone, i-pad, camera, or other device and email it to me at: bennett@bpsk12.org

*If you prefer to send me a link of the toy or print the photo and send it in on Monday, you can.*

Please let me know if you have any questions/concerns.

Thanks in advance and we look forward to sharing our writing!!