November 5th-8th

Thank you for all the hard work you put into the Turkey Family Projects. They look great decorating our bulletin board in the hallway. 

Reminders: There is no school tomorrow, Friday November 9th because it is a teacher workday. We are preparing the progress reports that will go home next week. 

There is no school Monday November 12th because it is Veteran's Day. 

I am still collecting hair conditioner for the hygiene drive

Reading and Writing:

This week we worked on the sounds /b/ and /f/. I introduced a new activity in our letter lessons called "quick erase" in which I write a word on the board and then change one sound a time. For example I might start with sun and say what happens when the /s/ becomes a /b/. Then the kids say bun! Then I'd say okay what happens if the /u/ becomes an /i/ and the kids say bin! It's meant to be a quick practice in sound manipulation and focusing more on listening to the word and what sound will change than actually sounding the words out. I also introduced a new app called I Speak Word Wizard on which we practiced quick erase together. This app has all the letters displayed like a keyboard and we practiced spelling the words and then changing one sound at a time. 

In writing this week we continued working on the narrative stories about the pumpkin patch and when the kiddos finished they did a new story about something they did over the weekend. When writing or dictating I am looking for kids to produce the following:

1. The topic-what they did/where they went

2. Two details about the topic-what happened, who was there etc.

3. A feeling-how they felt about what they did (and more than just "it was fun" which can be a very popular Kindergarten way to end a story)

We have been using StoryKit to practice including these important parts of a narrative and today the kiddos were asked to do the same exercise only this time trying to actually write it out on paper. We started with just writing the topic because at this point it is still hard work for Kinders to sound out all the words and get the topic written down. We are not at the point yet, where they can easily write out their entire story which is why we use StoryKit and dictation as well. This allows me to determine if they know what elements to include in the story and if they can do so in an order that makes sense even though they're not ready to write all of that. As they continue to practice writing they will be able to write more in their stories. 

Math:

This week we finished up our first math unit with a graph predicting who would win the presidential election. We talked about who the main candidates were (names only) and the kiddos drew a picture of who they thought would win. I created a graph Monday after school and on Tuesday we looked at the graph to compare how many votes each candidate got. I gave the first assessment yesterday and overall the results were really good. The only thing that I want to review is shapes as there is still some confusion between triangle, square, and rectangle. Next week we'll do some activities to promote shape recognition. 

Enjoy the long weekend!