Kindergator Update 2.29.20


Mr. Webster set the bar high with his movie quote opener last week. Hmmmm..... How about, “Don’t think about it as work. The whole point is just to enjoy yourself.” Because enjoy ourselves is what we did this week. STEM, Opinion Writing, Frogs. What a week!

Reading: We are continuing to develop our independent reading skills and making sure we reread to give ourselves a chance to think about the meaning of what the words tell us. We are working on vowels a lot. As we introduce long vowel sounds and how they are made, you might notice your child forgets that some words have the short vowel sound. That’s a natural hiccup in the process. We make sure we ask them to think about why / when vowels switch their sound as a reminder. And... we wanted to make sure your child is helping read your nighttime stories each day in between listening to them. They are ready and that makes for great practice! We have noticed more and more kiddos choosing the harder reading story on the Thursday homework and that it awesome!!!

Math: This week in math we continued to look at “Part-Part-Whole” diagrams and how we can use them to help with our addition and subtraction skills. We showed them as house models and balance beam models.  We made fact families to see how addition and subtraction are related within the same 3 numbers. We reviewed the difference between math models, number sentences and word / story problems as many kiddos seemed to struggle with that homework task.

Writing: This week students advanced in their opinion writing skills. We used our sensory writing unit to help come up with descriptive observations that helped us form opinions about thunderstorms, wet dogs and black licorice. We worked on opening with strong opinion language and following with 3 reasons why you feel the way you do, that also make sense to others. Our class was very polarized on their opinions of black licorice with some real surprises about who loved it.

Health: Students this week began their projects concerning how to prevent the spread of germs. They are making contagion webs to show how they spread, comparing the perspectives of a germ and a doctor and creating posters for the school to teach others what they should do. They are doing amazing work!

Vocabulary: part-part-whole, habitat, source, research

Big Things: Please welcome our new student, Oliver, who will join our class Monday. He came to visit on Thursday and Friday and was a huge help to his STEM team and research team.

Special Shoutouts:
  • Sawyer, MC, and Lennox who earned their STAR behavior this week.
  • MC who shocked us by asking for more and more black licorice to eat.
  • Mila and Lennox who extended their addition learning and multiple meaning word learning at home then came to show them off at school.
  • Kendal who brought shells in to show our class.
  • Hadley, who showed great leadership skills in her STEM team this week.
  • Mila, who reached 100 sight words this week.
  • Daniel, who is challenging himself to count to 1000 by 1’s
  • Mason, who read some super challenging Q words to us this week.
  • Dillan for great story writing and “blinder” reading this week.






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