Kindergator Update 3.1.19


Wow, did our kindergartners come in ready to learn and grow this week! It was so exciting to see how much they had retained even with the break. This really is a fun time of year, when they students begin to take off in their learning and maturity. We hope you are seeing signs of that at home too! Here are some of the fun things we did in class this week:


Reading: We reviewed the different kinds of reading texts we use. That means noticing the differences between fiction and non-fiction. We did puppet show retellings for The Ugly Duckling. We began using clues in the text we read to figure out a character’s traits. That means we are already transitioning from learning to read to reading to learn for many of our students.


Math: We continued learning about addition / subtraction strategies using the number line strategy and number bond strategy. We like to show the process in many different forms to cement the meaning of each and the rationale behind how and why we add or subtract. We hope that building a strong conceptual foundation will make them more fluent when they add or subtract in the future. We also began doing some advanced number work in our number talks. For example they were each assigned a number and asked to do one of the following things with it…..
             
              Find what was 10 more or 10 less than the number
              Find out what 100+ the number would be
              Find two ways to add and get that number
              Find out how many tens and ones are in that number


Writing:  We finished our unit on opinion writing. Stop by our hallway and see a few of the children’s writing pieces from the unit.


STEM: We looked over our “baby bear” broken chairs and reflected on our original design. Interestingly, none of the groups had made legs on the chairs and they laid upon the ground at first. So we discussed the purpose of a chair and looked at how it is usually designed then made a few (or lots) of alterations to our initial designs.


Science: We discussed the attributes of rocks and how different they can be. We listed all attributes of one rock and used rock books to research what type it might be based on those attributes. We discussed how the earth is made of rock and how rocks break down, eventually turning to pebbles or sand. Next week we will take this further and discuss the three types of soil that are most common.


BIG THINGS:
The end of the 3rd nine weeks is March 15th. We will be working hard in the next couple of weeks to get in our final assessments and some redos on things they might not have done well on the first time.  So please do your best to get your child to school each day on time.
This week we will lose a student, as Pennelope moves to Tennessee and gain a student as Kendal joins our class from Noonday. It will definitely be an emotional week for us in kindergarten as we say goodbye to our sweet Penny.

Vocabulary: numberline, number bonds (or part-part-wholes), decomposing, soil, main idea, details, rubric


Thank you to:
  • ·       Aspen and Gustavo who got their trophies for knowing 100 sight words.
  • ·       The student who is working so hard to get to 100 but keeps ending up at 99. We know she will be there soon and are proud of how positive her attitude has been about it.
  • ·       Pennelope who designed the best chair for baby bear. We had lots of ideas, but only one that stayed upright and held lots of weight. Funny shout out to my group whose design did not work and decide to just rename their chair a recliner to compensate.
  • ·       Zeb and Aspen who were great partners to our preschool visitors from Mrs. Stanton’s class.
  • ·       Landon, for an incredible letter transformation and story last week!
  • ·       Reese for helping us all realize we only have 1 birthday, but 364 unbirthdays each year that we could be celebrating!
  • ·       Everyone who participates in the Talent Show. It was wonderful and the kids had a great time watching it on Friday. Thank you Ms. McGhee who puts all this together each year for us.




             



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