May 20th-24th

Reading & Writing 
This week we are beginning our last reading unit which is on Amazing Creatures. Our first week's focus is on insects. We read a story today about Beetles and the kiddos came up with some great questions based on things they were wondering about beetles. We talked about some features of non-fiction texts including real photos and the table of contents. We also discussed the vocabulary words insects (creatures with 6 legs and a body that has three parts: head, thorax, abdomen) and interesting (something that gets your attention).

Our letter of the week this week is Z and our word of the week is friend. Students will learn the /ie/ sound on Wednesday and will do a post-test on opinion writing on Thursday. The goal for opinion writing is to express an opinion and to back it up with two reasons why.

Math
This week in math we will focus on "Tiny Tumblers" which is a visual used for drawing the two numbers/groups that are being added together to create a sum. Students will also learn about recognizing tens and ones and will work on writing numbers to 30.

This week I will also be reviewing some concepts that I identified as needing some more practice when assessing students such as 3-D shapes (sphere, cylinder, and cube), counting backwards from 10, and identifying sight words.

May 13th-17th

Reading and Writing
This week we will doing several different writing activities. We will finish our digital butterfly books, label the parts of a butterfly using the Skitch app, and write an opinion piece about whether or not we should release our butterflies. I hope you enjoyed the books we worked on for Mother's Day! On Thursday we will have DIBELS testing school wide to check in with how the kiddo's reading skills have advanced. If you are reading at home, keep it up! Reading with your child and having him or her read to you is so important!!

Students will also learn the /or/ sound this week as in corn. The letter of the week is Y and the word of the week is where. We are almost through the entire alphabet and only have one more letter after this week.

Math
We are continuing to use our pretend grocery store to practice story problems with addition and subtraction. The kiddos are really having fun pretending to shop and writing equations to match what classmates purchase.

Science
I arrived at school this morning to find that all five of our butterflies hatched over the weekend! The kids were very excited to photograph the butterflies with their iPads and to see what they look like. We watched a video about butterflies today so they could see some examples of other types of butterflies, learn about the butterfly body, and see how what it looks like when the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis because they didn't get to witness that with our own butterflies. Later this week, we will release the butterflies outside.

(Photo by Wondi)

The kiddos also have a few butterfly projects to do this week. Today, they colored butterflies to make them symmetrical on both sides and later in the week we will be making a butterfly out of a coffee filter. 

We've learned a few songs about butterflies and one student asked for a copy of the words, so I thought I would post them here.

The Fuzzy Caterpillar

(Tune: Itsy Bitsy Spider)

The fuzzy caterpillar

curled up on a leaf, 

spun her little chrysalis

and then fell fast asleep.

While she was sleeping

she dreamed that she could fly,

and later when she woke up

she was a butterfly!

I'll take a video of the class singing this song and another song and I'll post it. 

May 6th-10th

Reading & Writing
Our letter of the week this week is Q and our word of the week is me. The students will be learning the /ea/ sound as in team on Tuesday. They will continue working on a secret writing project and will label the parts of the butterfly using a photograph on the Skitch app. Students are also continuing to make their own digital book using the app Book Creator to tell about how the caterpillars are changing into butterflies.

Math
We are starting a new math unit that utilizes a pretend grocery store to create story problems. I have a little grocery stand set up with fake fruits and vegetables that the kiddos will use as props to tell story problems about buying food. Today we had two helpers at a time acting as the cashier and the shopper. The shopper chose two types of food to buy and told the rest of the class how many of each he/she was getting. Then the cashier and the rest of the group had to write the addition sentence to go along with the shopper's purchase on their iPads and solve the equation. It is really temping for Kindergartners to use materials like this just to "play," but they did a really great job of following the directions and everyone was engaged in math!

Science
We now have four pupa encased in chrysalises hanging from the top of our cup and one chrysalis that became unattached that is on the bottom. We are eagerly awaiting the arrival of butterflies, but that will probably not happen until next week. The kiddos are very excited to see the changes. It's cool to have creatures right in our classroom! Later this week, the kiddos will do an art project showing the life cycle of the butterfly and the different stages it goes through.

April 29th-May 3rd

Wow! 

I can't believe it's almost May already. 

Soon enough the kiddos will be leaving me to become big First Graders! 

Reminders

• Scholastic Book orders are due next Monday. This will be the last book order of the school year. 
• Spring photos are Thursday May 2nd. Only students who have an order form and payment will have their photos taken. If you are sending an order form with you child, please send me an email to let me know. That way I know to ask for it/check his/her backpack.

Reading/Writing
This week we are finishing up our unit on Plants. Our story this week is called Sunflower house and we will focus on the vocabulary words senses and garden. Our letter of the week is J and our word of the week is with. On Tuesday the kiddos will learn the /ay/ sound. Later in the week we will start working on a super secret writing project that will be revealed next week ;0)

Math
On Wednesday the kiddos will get to do some graphing and adding with jelly beans for some J week fun. We will continue practicing teen numbers by building ten-groups and extras with stamps. The kiddos will also fill in a blank 100 chart to see how many numbers they know between 1 and 100.

Science
It's that time of year...we have butterflies in our room! Well--not quite yet...we have caterpillars! This is one of the most exciting activities we do all year because the kids get to watch the caterpillars change into butterflies with their very own eyes. We will be documenting the changes by photographing our caterpillars with the Ipads. We've also started using a new app called Book Creator to make a book all about Butterflies. I am amazed at how quickly the kiddos learned how to add text, photos, and sound to their books. They are working on writing scientific descriptions of what they see and how the caterpillars are changing. We have also practiced using QR codes and the scan app to access beautiful photos of butterflies from the internet. QR codes are used to ensure that kids are accessing appropriate photos on the internet rather than running the risk they will encounter something they shouldn't see.

April 22nd-26th

Reading

Students are continuing to learn "first grade sounds" during phonics instruction. Because these sounds are more challenging, I introduce one new sound each week rather than several. This helps give a little more time for it to sink in.

Sound we have covered recently
/oo/ zoom to the moon
/ar/ start the car
/c/ city mice on ice (soft c)

This week our sound is
/ou/ shout it out

Our letter of the week is X and our word of the week is look.

This week we are continuing our reading unit on plants. We are in the second week of this unit and the focus this week is on Seeds and Plants. Last week we focused on How Trees Grow. Today our story talked about many different ways seeds can move from place to place such as getting carried by birds, blowing in the wind, or being carried by water. Later this week, the kiddos will get the chance to dissect a seed and see what it looks like inside.

Writing

Our current writing focus in Opinion writing. In this type of writing, the kiddos are expected to state their opinion relating to a particular topic or prompt and then give reasons to explain their opinion. When I was absent last Friday they wrote a piece in response to the question "Do you like to eat vegetables? Why or why not? As they are becoming more and more proficient in writing, spelling is becoming more accurate and we are now working on making sure to put periods at the end of each sentence and to capitalize the first letter of each new sentence. Writing is looking great!

Math

This week we are focusing on measurement. Today we looked at several different tools used to measure (measuring cups/spoons, a ruler, and two different kinds of measuring tape). We talked about how we use particular tools based on what we need to measure. One example I gave was that if I wanted to measure chocolate chips to add to my cookie recipe, I couldn't use a ruler for that. Throughout the week the kiddos will be doing some hands on measuring during math time and we will be using the math vocabulary words long/longer/longest, short/shorter/shortest, tall/taller/tallest.

March 11th-15th

Reminders/Upcoming Events

Starting March 18th Durham will be collecting food for the food backpack program. Ramen noodles, rice, beans, cereal, and cans of corn or green beans will be collected until March 22nd. We appreciate your donations!!

Next Friday will be our Teddy Bear parade. The kiddos have been working hard on their bears and they are ready to show them off! Our parade will begin at 9:30 and we will parade into other classrooms. After the parade I would love to have a special Bear Parade snack and serve some Teddy Grahams. If you would like to contribute a box of Teddy Grahams, please let me know. 

Spring conferences are this Friday! Your child is looking forward to showing off all that he/she has learned this year! Students will be using their iPads to show you some work during the conference and I am requesting that older/younger siblings not touch the iPads. Thanks for your help in honoring our Kinders and all their hard work.

Reading/Writing
Yesterday students completed the writing post assessment for informative writing. Their task was to write about why it is important to read. Informative writing can be quite challenging for students who are still focusing on learning the mechanics of writing and mastering sounds, but they did a great job.

We have been focusing a lot on writing in the past few weeks including some writing jobs about all of the wonderful Mo Willems books we have been reading. I introduced the kiddos to Knuffle Bunny last week during K week and they were big fans. Mo Willems also write stories about Pigeon as well as Gerald & Piggy. We use Socrative to vote for our favorite stories and characters and then analyzed the graph that was created based on our votes. The kiddos also wrote about which story was their favorite and why.

Next week we will begin a unit on weather and the kiddos will do some writing about weather.

Math
We are continuing to practice teen numbers in math. You will get to see how we use our iPad to practice showing ten groups and ones at your conference.

February 11th-15th

Reading & Writing
Students are continuing to work on narrative writing in their journals. Each Monday they write about one thing they did over the weekend. I ask them to include two details and a feeling about what they did. This week we talked about trying out some different words/feelings other than "good" and "fun."

They have also started working on their bear books where they will write about the process of sewing their Teddy Bear.

Our reading theme this week was animals and we read a story called Mole and the Baby Bird. Our new vocabulary words this week were habitat and responsibility. In the story, the mole came across a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest. Mole took the bird home to be his pet and put it in cage. Even though Mole was trying hard to take care of the bird, the bird wasn't happy because it couldn't fly. At the end of the story, Mole realized that the bird needed to be able to fly and wasn't able to do that if he was in a cage, so he let the bird go. At first Mole was sad, but then he was happy when he saw how happy the bird was to be free. After reading the story, students talked to their partners about whether or not they thought Mole was responsible to let the bird go.

This week we tried out a new app called Socrative with the help of Mr. Engstrom who works for the district and is available to help me co-teach when we use iPads. Socrative requires students to log into my "classroom" where they can take a quiz that I have prepared. I used this app to administer a quiz to practice spelling words. The great thing about the app is that I receive the student data via email so that I can track how students are doing and what sounds may need more practice.

We also tried out a new app called Scan that uses QR codes, but due to Internet issues, we had some trouble.

Our letter of the week this week was B and our word of the week was what.

Math
A letter was sent home in the Friday folders today that talks about what we are currently working on in math. We have begin unit 3 and are focusing on teen numbers. Students should recognize that when we write teen numbers they all start with a 1. They should also recognize that teen numbers have a group of ten and extra ones. I posted a Teen Number video prior to this post that you can watch. I add a second verse to the song that goes, Come on everybody let's sing it again, numbers in the teens have a group of 10! We've used the Doodle Buddy app as well as some hand motions to practice 11-13 so far.

We also practiced sorting candy hearts by color and graphing how many of each color students had.

Bears
Looking forward to having Amanda, Grammy Deb, Lindsay, and Stephanie next week for help with our Teddy Bears!

Teen Numbers

Super e

February 4th-8th

Reminders/Announcements:

• If you are interested in ordering from the February Scholastic Book Club flyers, please submit your order either online or on the paper order form by Monday the 11th. 
• We have officially started sewing Teddy Bears and the kids are so excited! We are a bit behind, so next week the kids will finish sewing on a heart and two buttons for eyes, and then they will sew their bear from ear to ear. 
• On Thursday, we will have a Valentine Party beginning at 10:00 AM. If your child is doing Valentine cards remember to have them complete a few at a time instead of the whole class at once. That's a lot of writing! Use the list I sent home and include students' numbers on the cards please.
• We are now starting our second round of Star/Co-Star of the Week. If your child was the Star the first time around, he/she will now be the Co-Star and vice versa. Students will still have a chance to do a show and tell, but a family project is replacing the family photo this time around. 

Reading/Writing

This week our letter of the week was E and our word of the week was this. The class was very excited that they are now able to listen to our sight word songs in iTunes on their iPads. We had to practice not singing out loud and dancing around while listening, but they are really enjoying the opportunity to listen to music. The sight word songs are a fantastic way to help them remember how to spell the sight words, which I do expect them to spell correctly in their writing. There are also some Learning with Hip Hop songs on there which I can already tell are going to be favorites.

We started using an app called Popplet this week, which is an app that I am also using for organizing my dissertation data. It's a mind-mapping tool that allows the kids to create webs and organize information visually. We made a Mrs. Toppel Popplet where my name was in the center and they wrote (typed) different things they know about me in the bubbles, which are called Popples, around my name. They also made a Popplet about either pets or zoo animals yesterday when Mrs. Emerson was subbing. They used information from the Baby Animals ABC book we read this week to categorize animals as either pets or zoo animals, then used their category at the center of the popple and the names of the animals in that group around category Popple. Once the kiddos have had a little more practice with the app, I will have them email their work to me so I can forward it to you. 

We are continuing with the theme of animals and learned about many different baby animals with our big book story this week--one animal for every letter of the alphabet! During big book read alouds, I always ask students to talk to their partners in order to have them recall information they learned, make predictions, and have a chance to interact rather than just sitting and listening. Kids love to talk, so I like to respect that and provide them with opportunities to share their ideas during my lessons. The vocabulary words this week were information and parents.

Math

This week we finished up our second unit in math, which focused on 5-groups. I gave the end of unit assessment today and the kids did great. The objectives of the unit were to write numerals 1-10, see and make numbers in 5-groups, and identify and continue a pattern. We also worked a lot on practicing the names of the basic shapes (circle, oval, square, rectangle, triangle) as well as hexagon and trapezoid. Starting Monday, the students will be at tables that are now marked by different shapes. From now on when I call table groups, I will use the name of the shape that is on the tables to help reinforce the shape names. 

Next week we start Unit 3 in our math program, which focuses on teen numbers 11-19. These numbers can be tricky for students, so I have a few fun ideas planned to get them interested and excited about teen numbers. The goals of Unit 3 are for students to find partners of numbers through 6, see teen numbers as tens and ones, and to use = and ≠ to pose and solve addition and subtraction problems. 

January 29th-February 1st

News & Reminders:

• We will be starting our Teddy Bear Project soon! Each student will get to sew his/her very own Teddy Bear. If you would like to send in special buttons to be the eyes on your child's bear, please do so by Wednesday February 6th.
• I already have a few parents who volunteer weekly, but I will need some additional help for the Teddy Bear project. If you are interested in helping please let me know! 
• We will have a Valentine's Day party on Thursday the 14th. I am sending info home about Valentine cards tomorrow in the Friday folders. 
• Report Cards are being sent home tomorrow.

Reading & Writing

Our letter of the week this week is R and our word of the week is for. 

This week we started a new unit on Animals which started with a story called Mama Cat and her Three Kittens. The vocabulary words for our story were compare and actions. We read the big book story that told about what the mama cat and her three kittens did, then we did a silent picture walk to remember all of the actions the cats did. After that, the kiddos talked with their partner to see how many actions they could remember from the story. Finally, they did some writing and completed the sentence "Cats can ____."

I introduced a new app this week called Skitch. We use this app to label pictures/photos in order to practice sounding out and spelling words. I will periodically email you examples of your child's work using this app so you can see the development in his/her spelling.

We have completed our Fast Track Phonics units, so we are now moving on to reinforce some word work skills. We are using various apps to practice spelling words and changing sounds to create new words.

Math
We are continuing to work with 5-groups, but this week we used pennies and 5-groups of pennies instead of the square inch tiles that we typically use. Today the class built the numbers 1-10 using 5-groups and extra pennies. Soon we will be moving on to teen numbers which helps to build the foundation for place value. All of the repetition in math is intended to build number sense and automaticity with basic math facts.

January 14th-18th

Reminders & Info: 

• There is no school on Monday due to MLK day. 
• I will be out next Wednesday because I am attending a workshop for our Digital Learning Collaborative grant.

Reading & Writing:
This week we are finishing up our third unit of Fast Track Phonics with the sounds /y/, /th/, and /x/. Next week I will be assessing students on recalling the sounds and writing the letters for the last 10 lessons we have done. We are continuing to practice sounding out simple words and writing them using the Sketchio app as a way to practice "break it down" which helps with figuring out how to write/spell words.

Our letter of the week is H this week and our sight word is you.

On Monday we read a big book story called Our Special Sweet Potato Pie. We talked about the vocabulary words special and feast. Students practiced retelling the important parts of the stories with their partner using picture clues. With our big book stories, we focus a lot on not just sitting quietly and listening to a story, but stopping to talk about what is happening, make predictions about what will happen next, and make connections between  the story we are reading and other stories we have read before. This type of shared reading is a great way for students to share their ideas and to do more thinking during story time. When I ask questions, I have students answer the questions with their partners because that way everyone gets a chance to talk and say what they think instead of just a few children who raise their hands.

Math:
This week we are spending a lot of time working with shapes. We have been drawing shapes, talking about the characteristics of shapes (how many sides, straight or curved lines) and today we used a new app called Geoboards to create shapes using virtual rubber bands. Most students can identify the basic shapes (circle, oval, square, rectangle, triangle) but we are also working to identify hexagons and trapezoids as well. Those two shapes are now considered "basic" shapes in Kindergarten. Times have changed...

Tomorrow we will work on building 3-D figures (cylinder, sphere, cone, and cube) with playdough. The concept of 3-Dimensional can be tricky so I think the kiddos need to create those figures and hold
them in their hands in order to really understand and learn about what they look like. I'm pretty sure the kiddos are going to be really excited about the play dough!

January 7th-11th

Welcome back and Happy New Year!

Reminders & Info

Next week on January 17th we have DIBELS testing at Durham. DIBELS is our school wide reading assessment that allows us to check in students' progress and to determine which students would benefit from additional reading support. 

Students received their snowmen, which is our January family project. Projects can be turned in anytime next week. The official due date is Tuesday January 22nd. Please let me know if you need any additional supplies for your creation. 

Reading & Writing

This week we started a three week unit on the topic of Food. Our vocabulary words this week were farmer and market. We read a story called Apple Farmer Annie and the kiddos worked on retelling the events of the story using picture cues with a partner. We also read a non-fiction piece on the process of making strawberry jam called From Strawberry Field to Strawberry Jam. We are continuing to work on informative/explanatory writing, so as a pre-writing activity, students used StoryKit to record the steps for making strawberry jam that we learned from the story. We practiced using the words first, next, and 

last. The goals for informative/explanatory writing in Kindergarten are for students to:

• Identify a topic about which they are writing (Dictation or Writing)
• Supply information about the topic (Dictation or Writing)
• Demonstrate proficiency in proper spacing between most words and word placement on lines (Writing)
• Capitalize the first word in a sentence and the pronoun "I" (Writing)
• Write letters for most consonant and short vowel words (Writing)
• Spell simple words phonetically (Writing)

Those are end of the year goals so we are working towards them and focusing on be able to organize and tell information at this point. 

This week we covered the sounds /ch/, /j/, and /v/. We are very close to completing our third unit which means the students are now using their skills to hear a word and "break it down" (or sound it out) in order to write it down. 

Our letter of the week this week is F and our sight word is "play."

Math

We are continuing to practice 5-groups. Our math program includes extensive practice with the intention that students will become proficient in knowing how to separate numbers into a group of five and extras which is building automaticity in basic math facts. Utilizing basic math facts is a necessary math skill that will be used in many grades to come, so, although it may seem like we practice the same thing over and over, it is with purpose. 

We have also been reviewing basic shapes which include circle, square, rectangle, oval, triangle, trapezoid, and hexagon. Today we did another shape picture similar to the tree and snowman that came home before break. These activities involve coloring the shapes according to the directions, cutting out the shapes, and assembling the shapes to create a new image. I modified today's activity a bit in that I didn't model for the students how to arrange the shapes once they were cut out. Instead I asked the class to think of a way they could go together and I got some very creative ideas. My original thought was a barn, yet I had students arrange the shapes to make a house, a school, a hotel, a tree house, and a secret fort.