Off To a Good Start

Bears
Thanks to Nikole Emerson and Ron Sapp for helping us get off to a great start with our Teddy Bear projects. Students began sewing eyes and hearts on their bears today and will continue with this first step all week. Since we are just starting out and parent helpers are working one on one with children, parents were able to work with about 4-6 kids today. All the children were really excited and anticipating their turn to work on their bears!

Art Literacy
Our Art Literacy has been moved to Thursday of this week, so we will have fun learning about a new artist and making some cool projects!

Vmath
We had some fun after school today with the families who came to learn about Vmath. A few kiddos tried it out for the first time and they loved it! The great thing about Vmath is that kids get to work at their own pace and their own level which means it's great for everyone! Children who need additional practice can repeat activities and practice what we have been working on in the classroom and children who are ready for more of a challenge can try some harder activities.

I highly recommend that you give it a try! www.vmathlive.com
Click on Sign in and then enter your child's log on information.**


**Tamie Lamb went ahead and changed log in names so they are less complicated for Kinder students. I am going to send home another instruction sheet on Thursday that includes your child's new log in name and password. If you want this info prior to Thursday, please email me or give me a call and I am happy to share it. The log in name (for most) will be 23 followed by the child's first name. The password is the child's 6 digit school ID number which is the same as it was when the first info sheet went home. Tamie is able to view which children had already logged on prior to today, so she chose not to change the log in names of those children to prevent confusion, however if your child has already been playing Vmath games and you would like to have a simpler log on name, please let me know and Tamie can easily change it.  If you want your child's info prior to Thursday, please email me or give me a call.

I hope to use my projector and laptop to show the kids some of the games that are available to get them excited about the site. It really is terrific and I have heard stories about kids making HUGE gains in math because they love playing which results in lots of math practice. Please try it out and let me know what you think!

Reading

I made a mistake this weekend when I wrote down our sight word for this week. We are actually focusing on the word "for" not the word "are." Tomorrow we will make our die cut words and learn our new song!

Friday Already?

The weeks just keep flying by, I can't believe it's Friday already. I am looking forward to a road trip up to Seattle this weekend to see a friend from high school that recently moved out this way from Boston.

Here's a little review of what we have been up to this week:

Math

We are continuing to focus on the teen numbers. Our puppet friend "Ten Bug" has helped the kiddos learn about making groups of ten and separating the ten from the ones. Then we do a little ten bug magic with the number tiles to show how the number representing the ones can cover the zero in the ten to show the teen number.

Writing

Thursday and Friday we spent some time doing journal writing. Now that the kids are doing a great job "breaking it down" and sounding out words, I have started asking them a question and having them write a sentence to answer. This week I asked them what they want to be when they grow up. We started with a partner activity during which each kiddo got to tell their partner what they want to be when they grow up. Then when we shared with the whole class, the children had to share what their partner wanted to be so I could reinforce the importance of listening to the other person. Once we shared some ideas, the kiddos got their journal paper to write a sentence and draw a picture to go with it. We had some great work and I will scan some of their work to post here. I am going to also put the pages together to make a class book because I really want the kids to feel proud of their work and to be encouraged to take their time and do their best.

Reading

For the past few weeks, we have been working on some "First Grade Sounds." I introduced some long vowel sounds and the double e and both classes have done a wonderful job sounding out some more challenging words. We talk about the "helper e" and how e helps the vowels say their names. I am so impressed with how much the kiddos are improving and very excited to see them blossoming! Next week, on Monday and Tuesday we will be focusing on /o_e/ and reading words like home, rope, and tone. We will also review the letter r and the sight word "for."

Literacy Bags

I hope that you are enjoying the literacy bags. Thanks for taking good care of them and returning them on time. I can see how excited the kids get when they arrive on Fridays and see their bags hanging on their cubby hooks, so it seems like the program is going really well! I had two girls in the afternoon class overjoyed and thanking me when they saw which bags they got to take home today. We have had a few books and items go missing and I have really appreciate parents letting me know when they receive a bag that has something missing. That way I can look at who the previous borrower was and try to track things down.

Fun Stuff
On Monday, both classes will have Art Literacy with Katie Webb, which is always fun. We are also starting our Teddy Bear projects and I know everyone is excited and looking forward to that. I really appreciate all of the parents who are volunteering their time to come in and help with this very big project and parents who were able to do some prep work at home. You are all wonderful!

Have a great weekend!!

Highlights of the Week

Lost and Found
We have quite a few clothing items from my two groups that have been left behind. If your child is missing a jacket, mittens, or anything like that, please let me know. I will do my best to match the items with their owners. It is always a great idea to write your child's name in items that they take off (especially jackets, zip ups etc.) so that if something gets left behind I can hang it up on their hook for the following day. Here are some items in my little Kinder lost and found...

Snowman Glyphs

This week we made snowman glyphs. Instead of just coloring the picture, the kiddos had to listen to two choices and then color a particular part based on their answer. The choices were as follows:

Color the snowflakes purple if you like chocolate ice cream.
Color the snowflakes red if you like vanilla ice cream.

Color the hat black if you have built a snowman.
Color the hat yellow if you have never build a snowman.

Color the nose orange if you like to make snow forts.
Color the nose red if you like to make snow angels.

Color the scarf pink if you are a girl.
Color the scarf blue if you are a boy.

Color the snow buttons green if you like to sled.
Color the snow buttons brown if you do not like to sled.

Color the snow pile your favorite color.

Here are a few examples:

The Bucket Book

This week we also read a fantastic book called Have You Filled a Bucket Today? The book talks about how every person carries around an invisble bucket and that we can be bucket fillers by being kind and doing nice things  or bucket dippers by doing not so nice things. We talked a lot about what the students thought they could do in order to be bucket fillers. Today we practiced "journal writing" and wrote a sentence about how we would be bucket fillers. If your child mentions something about either filling or dipping into their bucket, now you know what they are talking about. This is a great reminder that we need to be kind to each other and do and say nice things both in class and at home. Some of the kids said they were going to give their moms hugs, play with their siblings, be nicer, invite other kids to play with them, and they sure have been giving me lots of compliments to fill my bucket. The best comment...

"Mrs, Toppel I love you and you're a nice teacher" -Micah

DIBELS

We also had our DIBELS testing on Tuesday of this week and the kids were great. Not only did they do really well on the measures, but they were so patient and quiet when they had to wait their turn. They have been working really hard and it is showing! Great job!

Next Week

Next week, we will be working on the letter D. Diana (AM) and Darney (PM) are the stars of the week. We will also focus on the sight word "you."

Have a great weekend!

Science Club and Story Problems

Science

Gabe's mom, Nikole Emerson, will be teaching a Science Club for students in grades K-2 the last Thursday of each month from 2:30-3:20 pm starting on 1/27. Nikole is a loyal parent volunteer in the AM class so I have first hand experience in seeing how great she is with kids! This is a wonderful opportunity for kiddos to have some fun with science and I highly recommend that you sign up! The list of themes and activities seems really fun and I know that the kids will LOVE doing hands on science activities. I received sign up forms in my box midday on Friday, so I was not able to send them home with children in the AM class. Because there are a limited number of spots and it is first come first serve, I wanted to make sure to post about the opportunity so parents from the AM class are aware. I will be sure to send home the information sheet which has a permission slip on the back on Tuesday and please return it asap if you want your child to participate!

Math
An important part of our new math program is "math talk." There is a strong emphasis on kids being able to use math language and explain their thinking about the activities that we do. This week, we will be working a lot with story problems where the children have to think of real life stories that involve math and tell them to a partner. Some of the skills involved in the work we will do are:

• Building language through telling/retelling story problems
• Using objects to solve story problems
• Showing the operation with Number and +/- tiles
• Sharing solutions
• Recording the situation and equation

We have done a few lessons using story problems in the past and I was really impressed by the stories the kids came up with. It is a great exercise in using math talk and explaining mathematical thinking.

Let it snow!

Don't forget to return your snowman project on Tuesday if you haven't already done so. We have about 10 snowmen hanging in the hallway so far and they look great! I really love seeing all the hard work and creativity that goes into the family projects. Thanks for helping at home and supporting these activities.

Book club orders are also due Tuesday! I will complete the order Tuesday after school.

SIght Word Song and Teddy Bears!

This week the sight word we are focusing on is "play." Today we learned the song of the week and it goes like this...

p-l-a-y play, p-l-a-y play

Let's all play now

Let's all play now

p-l-a-y play, hey!

I sent out an email earlier about our Teddy Bear project. Each child gets the opportunity to sew their very own Teddy Bear, which will be really fun and exciting!! In order to complete this six week project, I will need lots of parent volunteer time. If you are interested and available to help, please let me know asap! I need to ensure I will have enough help before I get the supplies and tell the kids about it. No sewing experience is required, I simply need adults to help the children 1:1 or in small groups during each stage of the project. Giving even 30 minutes of your time will really help us out and I know the kids will have so much fun making a fuzzy friend! Shoot me an email, sent me a note, or give me a call if you can help out! Thanks so much!

I will be out on Wednesday for the monthly PASS training, but I will be popping into the morning class to do some assessing prior to the start of the training. It looks like we might be having some nasty weather, so I want to let you know that in the event we have a 2 hour delay there is no AM Kindergarten. It's a great idea to sign up for flashalert emails/texts through the district website so you are notified when there are delays or cancellations due to weather.

Winter Snowmen

I sent home the January snowman project today and I hope they made it home safely. It was quite windy at the end of the day and I worried they were going to blow away! Just like the turkeys and the collages, this is a chance to do some fun artwork and be creative. The snowmen were originally going to be due on the 14th, but I decided not to send them home on Friday because I thought the combination of the big paper and the literacy bags would just be too much to carry. I changed the date to the 18th (Tuesdsay) so that you will have the weekend to get supplies and spend some time working on it.

Please remember that Literacy Bags need to be returned on Monday. I know that weekends go by very quickly and it seems like such a short time to have the bags at home, but I do need them back so I can get them organized to send home again on Friday. When you receive the bag, please check to make sure all of the items are included and make a note of anything that is missing. I want to keep good track of the items so that we can continuing using these bags for the rest of the year (and next year too!). I hope you are enjoying them and I would love your feedback about how they are working out from your perspectives.

This week we are focusing on the letter f and the sight word play. We have been going back to review some of the trickier sounds and working hard so that every student knows all of the sounds we have been practicing. DIBELS is coming up next week which means the students will be assessed on three tasks

Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF)
Students will be asked to sound out words like kik, fup, or pid. The words are made up words so that students will not automatically recognize them as they would simple words like cat or dog. This is so that we can accurately gauge their ability to sound out unfamiliar words. Students are asked to sound out as many nonsense words as they can in a one minute period of time and winter benchmark is 13 correct words.

Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF)
In the classroom, we refer to this strategy as "break is down." The students will hear a word and they will have to say all of the sounds they hear in the word. For example, if the teacher says "had," the student needs to say /h/ /a/ /d/. The winter benchmark for PSF is 18 correct words.

Letter Naming Fluency (LNF). Students will be asked to identify as many letters as they can in 1 minute. The letters will not be in alphabetical order and will be both lower case and upper case. The winter benchmark for this skill is correctly naming at least 27 letters.

We have been working hard since the beginning of the year in all of these areas. The DIBELS assessments helps give us good information about each student's growth and what their strengths and weaknesses are so that we can adjust how we help them. If you have any questions or would like to know what you can do to help with these skills at home, please let me know!

Happy New Year

I can't believe it has taken me this long to post after starting back up this week! The week has gone by fast so far! We have been going back to the basics this week and reviewing some of our classroom rules and routines since it's tough to be away from the classroom for two whole weeks. I hope everyone had a wonderful break and I would like to wish everyone a very happy new year.

On Monday we started out by reviewing the expectations for our morning work routine and what that looks like in the classroom. The children practiced the different steps they take in the morning when they arrive and practiced cleaning up their tables, pushing in their chairs, and putting away their morning work when it's time to come to the carpet. We also practiced lining up and walking in line since we now will be traveling to the gym for PE once a week. Mr Gaffney decided that it was tough to have great PE lessons in the classrooms since the space is very limited for gross motor activities, so we are now changing our PE schedule. We will have a 20 minute PE lesson in the gym once a week and then the other day we are scheduled for PE we will not have a special, which gives us additional time for the math lesson we miss as a result of having additional PE time another day. The morning session had their first PE class in the gym and they loved it! It was really great for them to have such a large space to move around in. It's also really beneficial for them to get out of the classroom and see different parts of the school and to practice walking quietly in the hallway! If possible, please make sure to send your child to school with sneakers on PE days. I will indicate on the monthly calendar when those days are.

This week we are also focusing on the letter o and the sight word "is" and the students are experiencing their first week without daily choice time. Instead of having choice time everyday, the kids will now have it once a week and we will be doing other activities during the 30 minutes when some children leave for ELD.  Both classes have been working on math tile games which are really great for reinforcing the math concepts we are learning. Those games are leveled to meet the needs of different learners and children are able to work through them at their own pace. 

I always found in teaching first grade that the students really started to make huge leaps and bounds after winter break. It was always so great to see them really become more independent and proficient in their work and skills. I have already seen a great amount of progress with both of my Kinder classes and I am really looking forward to seeing even more growth and change and we make our way through this very cold winter! (I spent my break in Arizona, so it was a bit tough to leave the warm sun and return to the cold and now rain!)


Coming Up: Next week I will be out on Wednesday for my monthly PASS training and Jill Solheim will be subbing in the classroom.