We are super readers! As readers, we have super powers! We discovered that with pointer power we can look and point and then read everything we can! At school this week we celebrated ourselves as readers. I asked the students to read around the room, pointing to and reading words that they knew on charts, labels, or books! The class was able to read so many words and they realized they are the kind of readers who can just look at a word, point at it, and READ it! They embraced this new found super power! Then in small groups we used our pointer power (with a spooky witch finger) to put our finger under one word, then the next, and the next, and actually read what the words say."Pointer power, activate!" We also got to see chemical reactions in spooky science lab!
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Red Ribbon Week Spirit Days October 28th – November 1st Monday – Proud to be Drug Free! Wear red to help kick off Red Ribbon Week! Tuesday – Peace Out to Drugs! Wear peace signs and/or tie dye Wednesday – Follow Your Dreams! Wear your pajamas! Thursday – Say Boo to Drugs! Dress up as your favorite storybook character (no masks/hoodies/fake weapons)! Friday – Team Up Against Drugs! Wear your favorite sports shirt or jersey This week and we had a place value boot camp to help us practice the concept of tens and ones using base ten blocks! I was the drill sergeant and called out "I don't know what I've been told, tens are tall and ones are small, first you count up all the tens and then the babies at the end." Then I called out a teen number and they did ten jumping jacks and however many ones were left over they did that many push ups! I gave all the students dog tags with a teen number on it that they were able to decompose the number independently. We had a lot of fun! Speaking of decomposing! Not only in math did we discuss decomposing numbers but in science lab we talked about decomposing pumpkins! Something exciting coming up in reading next week!! We will begin our “Super Powers” unit. We will delve more into strategies that can help us read. Next week we will focus on pointing under each word as we read..."Pointer Power!" We will also practice re-reading if the text doesn’t look right, sound, right, or make sense. We will be working several times with the book “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” to practice these strategies. We will also continue to work in guided reading groups and students will work on building their reading stamina independently and work on IRead.
-In math next week we will begin out 2nd unit in math! Please see the new standards below. We will begin decomposing and comparing numbers next week. Work with numbers 11–19 to gain foundations for place value. MGSEK.NBT.1 Compose and decompose numbers from 11 to 19 into ten ones and some further ones to understand that these numbers are composed of ten ones and one, two, three, four, five, six , seven, eight, or nine ones, e.g., by using objects or drawings, and record each composition or decomposition by a drawing or equation (e.g., 18 = 10 + 8) Know number names and the count sequence. MGSEK.CC.3 Write numbers from 0 to 20. Represent a number of objects with a written numeral 0-20 (with 0 representing a count of no objects). Count to tell the number of objects. MGSEK.CC.4 Understand the relationship between numbers and quantities; connect counting to cardinality.
can be thought of as a dime. (Use dimes as manipulatives in multiple mathematical contexts.) Compare numbers. MGSEK.CC.6 Identify whether the number of objects in one group is greater than, less than, or equal to the number of objects in another group, e.g., by using matching and counting strategies. MGSEK.CC.7 Compare two numbers between 1 and 10 presented as written numerals. Classify objects and count the number of objects in each category. MGSEK.MD.3 Classify objects into given categories; count the numbers of objects in each category and sort the categories by count. MGSE1.NBT.1 Count to 120, starting at any number less than 120. In this range, read and write numerals and represent a number of objects with a written numeral. Writing numbers to 50. What you can do at home: Practice counting to 120 every night and practice writing numbers to 50. Discuss that a penny equals 1 cent and practice counting pennies with one to one correspondence. Discuss that a dime equals ten cents and that we can trade ten pennies for a dime. Practice counting dimes by 10’s. For a challenge, put dimes and pennies together and have students count. Find objects around the house and compare groups-which group has the greatest amount? Least amount? Do any groups have an equal amount? Practice decomposing numbers into tens and ones. - In writer’s workshop, we will continue our “Show and Tell’ unit by writing show and tell stories. We will continue to work on thinking of an idea, telling about all the parts, and beginning to write and draw all the parts. This week we focused on adding labels to our drawings, check out our label work on seesaw! What you can do at home: have students practice sounding out words and writing down the sounds they hear on paper and draw pictures with details and label their pictures. You can also remind students that when writing, the first letter in a sentence is uppercase and the rest is lower case, there are finger spaces between words, and periods at the end of sentences. We will continue to work on this in class. - In reading, we will continue our 2nd reading unit of study. We will continue to pay attention to the character’s feelings by noticing what clues the author and illustrator gives. Students will then use this to label their books with a sticky note. If a student notices a character is happy, they can sound out the word happy on a sticky note and place it in the book. They can do the same things with other feelings. Students will also work labeling pictures in our books to match what we are working on in writing. For instance in our book The Three Billy Goats Gruff, students can label the animals, places and things they see such as the troll, bridge, goats, etc. using sticky notes. During reading groups, we will be reading instructional level texts and using strategies to help us decode words. What you can do at home: Read every night like you are working with a partner (sit side by side, have a book in the middle, read back and forth, etc.) and ask your child questions about what she/he is reading about. For students who need to work on letters and letter sounds, you can have students find letters around the house and ask them what sounds they make. -In social studies, we will begin our unit on identifying and explaining the meaning of American symbols (statue of liberty, American flag, liberty bell, etc.) We will begin this unit by having students draw any sign they know of and then we will go on a symbols scavenger hunt around school. At home, you can discuss different symbols you see when you are out and what they mean. You can discuss how symbols show information and if symbols mean the same thing to everyone. Would people in other countries understand what these symbols mean? Why is it important to understand symbols? What positive character traits do you display? Why? -We will begin our 2nd IB unit. Transdisciplinary theme: Who We Are Central Idea: Symbols show information. Lines of Inquiry: Symbols and people that represent our country (perspective) Symbols and people that represent countries around the world (perspective) How positive character traits can shape an individual ( reflection/ responsibility) Key Concepts: Perspective, Reflection, Responsibility Related Concepts: Beliefs, Interpretation, Values Transdisciplinary skills: * Thinking Skills- Comprehension * Communication- Viewing. Students will have multiple opportunities to view symbols through different types of media and interpret the information they learned. * Social Skills- Cooperating. Students will have to work together to research one country and then to present together the information they learned to other kindergarten students. Attitudes: Creativity, Appreciation, respect Learner Profile: Thinker, open-minded, caring What you can do at home: Discuss the learner profile words of thinker, open-minded, and caring and the attitudes of creativity, appreciation, and respect and how students can display these in their community. October Cookies for Character- I will be looking for students who demonstrate the learner profile of thinker/inquirer. The Learner Profile is: Thinker/Inquirer Some of you might have seen on seesaw, that we had a third grader who went to London, England last week come in and tell our class all about England! The students had excellent questions for him and used what they already knew about England to structure their questions! It was amazing! It was so fun to learn more about our country of study from a kid!!! Some important dates next week:
Tuesday: Mariachi band for Hispanic Heritage month comes to perform. Also students will share their community helper buildings this day Thursday: RFF day (no school for students, but school for teachers) Friday: Conference Day (thanks to those of you who emailed me letting me know you are out of town) In math we continued our counting and numbers math unit. We will review our counting strategies- touch and count, move and count, line up and count, count out loud, count on, and re-count. We will discuss what happens when students need to count items that we can’t move and are on a piece of paper for instance- we can cross off each picture on our paper as we are counting to help us keep track. We began to work on sorting, counting and ordering. The ordering part of this standard can be difficult which is why this standard appears in all of our math units. To practice, students can sort items at home by color, shape, or size, count how many items are in each group, and put the groups in order from least to greatest or greatest to least. Here is a great game for this: http://www.abcya.com/counting_sorting_comparing.htm Next week we will sort, count, order, and graph Halloween erasers (Thanks Elsie's mom!) This week students did a fun math craftivity, where they chose a “mystery number” and wrote clues for their friends to determine their number. At home, please make sure students are practicing counting to 100 by 1’s and 10’s every night, to 120 when they have mastered counting to 100, and practicing writing their numbers 0-20. (Fun ways of writing numbers can be with chalk outside, in sand or shaving cream, on a whiteboard, etc.) When students have mastered this, you can practice skip counting by 2, 3, 4, etc. and discuss odd and even numbers. Here are our math standards for this unit: MGSEK.CC.1. Count to 100 by ones and by tens. MGSE1.NBT.1 Count to 120, starting at any number less than 120. In this range, read and write numerals and represent a number of objects with a written numeral. MGSEK.CC.2. Count forward beginning from a given number within the known sequence (instead of having to begin at 1). MGSEK.CC.3. Write numbers from 0 to 20. Represent a number of objects with a written numeral 0-20 (with 0 representing a count of no objects). MGSEK.CC.4 Understand the relationship between numbers and quantities; connect counting to cardinality. a. When counting objects, say the number names in the standard order, pairing each object with one and only one number name and each number name with one and only one object. (one-to-one correspondence) b. Understand that the last number name said tells the number of objects counted (cardinality). The number of objects is the same regardless of their arrangement or the order in which they were counted. c. Understand that each successive number name refers to a quantity that is one larger. MGSEK.MD.3. Classify objects into given categories; count the numbers of objects in each category and sort the categories by count. - In writer’s workshop, we began our “Show and Tell’ unit. Students have been loving drawing their special item with details and labels. . We will continue discussing how to show and tell, be brave spellers, and work with writing partners during this unit. What you can do at home: have students practice sounding out words and writing down the sounds they hear on paper and draw pictures with details and label their pictures. You can also remind students that when writing, the first letter in a sentence is uppercase and the rest is lower case, there are finger spaces between words, and periods at the end of sentences. We will continue to work on this in class. - In reading, we will celebrate completing our first reading unit. Students will choose an old favorite storybook or learn about the world book and read it to a new partner. They will keep in mind everything we have learned: readers read from cover to cover, we make the words and the pictures match, we sound like the characters, etc. During reading groups, we have been and will continue to read instructional level texts and use strategies to help us decode words. What you can do at home: Read every night like you are working with a partner (sit side by side, have a book in the middle, read back and forth, etc.) and ask your child questions about what she/he is reading about. For students who need to work on letters and letter sounds, you can have students find letters around the house and ask them what sounds they make. -In social studies, we will begin to wrap up our first unit. The community helper buildings look AMAZING!!!! Students will get to share their buildings on Tuesday the 15th with the class and will get to go to the other kindergarten classrooms (and they come to ours) to see all the wonderful buildings that were made!. What you can do at home: Discuss the following: Why is it important to be a good citizen? What is a community? What is a community helper? What role do I play in a community? |
About Me
This is my seventh year at HFE. I love teaching, reading, writing, traveling, and sushi Archives
April 2021
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