Friday Note 1-29-16

Friday Note 1/29/16

This Week: We started off the week by celebrating the 100^th day on Monday followed by the 101^st day with a Dalmatian Celebration on Tuesday. 

·         Math- we practiced counting to 100 for our 100^th day celebrations!  We learned to use a hundreds chart and worked on some fun 100 day activities! 

·         Language Workshop—We read and discussed many different winter fiction books.  We also learned how to tell a fiction book from an informational text.

·         Writing Workshop—We practiced writing complete sentences.  We learned how to turn a word or thought into a sentence.

·         Reading Workshop—Students are working daily in Literacy Centers.  While students are working independently, I am meeting with small groups or individual students to focus on different skills. 

·        Word Study- We introduced the concept of rhyming by playing games using rhyming words.

**We have finished learning the letters in the alphabet. Please work with your child if they do not know all of the letters and sounds.

Important Dates:

o   Feb. 4: Cox Care Mobile

o   Feb. 12: Valentine’s Party (More information to follow)

o   Feb. 15: No School

o   Feb. 19: PTA Winter Festival

Sight Words—Keep practicing!

I    is    like    see    my    a    the    be   have

it   he    she   to  can   with  go  we  me  you  and

What do the teachers do on Fridays after the students go home???

Every Friday Clever students are dismissed early to allow time for teacher collaboration.  After students leave for the day, district faculty assembles together to learn and work to better the education of our students.  Teachers have learned new ways to implement technology, new teaching strategies, and how to better serve our students.

The Kindergarten team has focused on letter identification since the beginning of the year.  Each teacher gathered data during the first few weeks of school.  At that time, 18 kindergarten students (20%) were able to identify all upper and lower case letters.  The kindergarten teachers collaborated with other members of our team, which includes our preschool teacher, a Parents as Teachers Home Educator, a Speech Therapist, and reading specialists, on ways to help our students learn their letters.  After two quarters of instruction we are happy to report 81 students (88%) can identify all their letters!  An additional 10 students (11%) are very close to meeting our goal!  Our class had only three students in August who could identify all 52 letters, but at the December break we had 15 students who reached our goal!  What wonderful improvement! 

The kindergarten team will be focusing on student reading in the coming quarters!  Keep reading at home to help your child reach proficiency in their reading!

The Character word for January is:

Perseverance

(Never, ever quit!)

Reading Challenge

Thank you to all of the parents that read with your child this week and returned their book bag and logs today.  If you did, then your child is coming home with new books in their book bags today.  If you did not, please return these on Monday so that your child can get new books and can continue to work to earn the Reading Challenge for 3^rd quarter.

Next Week:

• We will begin our class research project about Walruses.
• We will begin our unit on subtraction.
• Our sight word will be “are”.

Have a great weekend!!