Kindergator Update 1.18


Happy almost Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Don’t forget that there is no school on Monday in honor of Dr. King. It has been a long week, with both Mrs. Walkup and myself ill, but we made it through! Here are some things we were able to work on this week.

Goal Setting: The students looked at their current scores and data notebooks to see where they were and think about what things they might want to work on. Then we examined a picture based list of things they might want to set goals for and thought about which ones fit and which ones did not. From the list each student picked 4 goals to work on during our “goal time” twice a week. The kids did a really good job at picking out things they need and might be a challenge for them. The number one choice for most of the kids was…learning to tie their shoes.

Reading: We have begun our unit on long vowels and why vowels sometimes change their sound. There are 4 reasons: when bully-e makes them, when two vowels go walking, when y changes its sound to “e” or “I” and sight words that do not follow rules.  We also began our fairy tale unit by evaluating what all fairy tales have in common and how to compare and contrast different versions of them. This is a fun unit and we hope you hear about the stories at home.

Math: We are into our addition unit. We began by learning all things addition means like more, bigger or putting things together. Then we worked on the counting on strategy for adding numbers together quickly. That means circling the bigger number and drawing dots for the smaller number. Students can say the circled number then count up the dots to find the answer. The class is getting faster at addition each day. We also learned about addition models. That means representing the number sentence (3 +2) by drawing three of one thing and two of another. We even reversed the process making number sentences from models and then models from number sentences.

Writing: We are working on using our senses to describe things in creative ways. We tried black licorice, red hots and sour patch kids and came up with awesome descriptions for each. We will use our words to write our first opinion piece this week.

Health: We compared and contrasted ways to prevent the spread of germs. Each of the kids who finished their projects became a PDI (Protect Don’t Infect) agent tasked with stopping germs.

Vocabulary: additions, subtraction, opinion, positive, negative, compare and contrast


BIG THINGS:
We now have 100% of our class counting by 1’s and 10’s. We also have 7 students already at 100 sight words and a lot more very close! Woo-Hoo!
Addison has an awards day very close to the last day of school. Parents will be invited to come and watch their children earn awards for things like attendance, leadership, and writing. Kindergarteners are eligible for 3 special awards: one for being able to count to 100 by 1’s, 10’s and 5’s, one for knowing all 100 sight words and the last for tying their shoes. So keep practicing those skills!
The students were allowed to pick their own seats in the classroom when they came back to school recently. We saw some great choices happening with some people venturing out purposely to make new friends and others picking table partners who they thought would help them stay focused during work time. It was fun to watch!

Thank you to:
  • Ava, our January leader of the month who has been going the extra mile to help others in class.
  • Elle’s family for sending in more CLOROX wipes. Us teachers are trying to be PDI agents too!
  • Mrs. Reaves for jumping in to help when Mrs. Walkup and I were ill.
  • Jackson for turning in an awesome science fair project and sharing with the class how his experiment worked. We hope you got to see it on STEM night last night.
  • Elle, Reese, Jackson, Sarah Kate, Harper J. and Pennelope for earning their STAR behavior this week.
  • Ava, Grant, Dilan, Jaliegh, Harper J., Jackson and Rayell for knowing all 100 sight words!



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