Week 7 Update

Week 7 Update

It has been wonderful meeting with parents over the past few weeks. Thank you for taking the time to come to school to discuss your child’s progress with me.  We have our last half-day for parents conferences on Tuesday of this week.  We will be having our “Pumpkin Camp” this week – on Wednesday and Thursday.  We will be having our Halloween celebration on Thursday afternoon and parents are invited to join us from 2:30 – 3:15 for treats and a few Halloween games.  Please let me know if you will be attending so I can reassure your child when they ask. 

In the computer lab this week, we went online to Johnny’s Math Page (jmathpage.com) and played games on the ten frame. These games are located in the number section of the website and would be great to practice at home as well. 

Our guided reading groups have been meeting and we are really building our stamina during “read to self” and “read to someone”.  Ask your child to tell you about the decoding strategies they are using.  In writing, we are working on “bringing our characters to life” by adding details and maybe even some dialogue. We will continue working on this over the next few weeks.

Our Word Wall words for the past two weeks were: saw, him, her, when, why, had, not, note, those, these. I will try to remember to post them weekly so you can help your child practice them at home as well.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to our Family Game Night basket for the PTO Auction. I hope you will be able to attend on November 5th at 6pm. This is a great fundraiser for our amazing PTO! 

Enjoy this beautiful fall weekend!  Please make sure your child has a jacket for recess this week. The winds are blowing! :) 

Week 6 Update

Evan though week 6 was a short week for us, we accomplished a LOT! We have started our seed unit and are learning about what a seed needs to grow and how they travel.  We pulled apart a lima bean seed that had been soaked in water to see the baby plant inside. Ask your child if they can tell you the 3 parts of the inside of the lima bean seed. In reading, we added Listen to Reading to our Daily Five stations, using the laptop computers.  The kids did a great job listening to a story and writing about their favorite part. Ask your child to tell you about the story Owen, what they liked best about it and why that was their favorite part. We are still working on our "small moment" stories in writing and are adding transition words and more details.  We are using a checklist to make sure we have included all the elements of a personal narrative, as well as an editing checklist.  In math, we have finished our second unit on subtraction.  We will be adding some math games this week to help us build our fact fluency.  Thank you for continuing to work on facts to ten at home as well.  Please send in a small pumpkin with your child by the end of this week as we will be using them for Pumpkin Camp next week. It should be a lot of fun! I hope you had a great weekend. - Kristin

week 5 update

I hope you have all had a wonderful long weekend! We have a short, but busy week ahead of us.  We have a half day on Thursday for Parent teacher Conferences with dismissal at 11:45 am.  Please send a note to school on Thursday if your child is doing something DIFFERENT from their normal routine.  

Our conference schedule is: 

Thursday October 17th  Parent Teacher Conferences

8:40 – 9:00 am  Erin and Chris Pajak

12:30 – 12:50 Kristen May

12:50 – 1:10   Teresa Robinson

1:10 – 1:30     Ben Fugitt

1:30 – 1:50     _______________________

1:50 – 2:20     Shawna Vatter

2:20 – 2:50     _______________________

2:50 – 3:10     _______________________

3:10 – 3:30    Caryl Baltis

Wednesday October 23rd

8:40 – 9:00 am     Jaime Greenfield

12:30 – 12:50      Judy Kibrick

12:50 – 1:10        Shoham Huli

1:10 – 1:30        Jen and Brandon Curry

1:30 – 1:50        Michael Gough

1:50 – 2:20        Ann Oke

2:20 – 2:50     Paula Mendez

2:50 – 3:10     Kelsey vonWedel

3:10 – 3:30     Chloe Kosoc

Tuesday October 29th

8:40 – 9:00 am  Trish and Don Robbins

12:30 – 12:50 Vardan and Anna Amirbekian

12:50 – 1:10   Wyatt Williams

1:10 – 1:30    Dwayne Tutunjian

1:30 – 1:50     _______________________

1:50 – 2:20     Max Waldenmaier

2:20 – 2:50  Donnamarie and DeAnne Martocci

2:50 – 3:10     Susan Salzer

3:10 – 3:30     Siobhan and Paul Matrose

Thank you to everyone who sent in food for our food drive and for encouraging your child to bring in healthy snacks this past week! In reading workshop, we are starting to add more stations to our Daily Five routine and read to self and read to someone are really coming along nicely! The kids are working on staying "in the zone" while reading.  

In writing workshop, we started using transitional words to help signal movement in our personal narrative stories. Ask your child to tell you 4 or 5 words they can use to show transitions.  

In math, we are finishing up our second unit this week, which focuses on missing parts for subtraction.  

I am looking forward to our upcoming conferences. I will be giving you the AIMS web reports for reading and math and showing you the new report card we will be using in January, as well as discussing how your child has been adjusting to first grade.  Please feel free to bring any questions you or your child has to our conference. Thanks! - Kristin 

 

Week 4 Update

Week 4 Update

Word Wall: This past week we added new words to our word wall. So far our list includes,

dog, he, is, me, my, name, said, she, this, to, they, that, of, was, with.  Ask your child to tell you what it means when we add a word to our wall. These are words you can practice reading and spelling at home as well. 

Writing workshop: We are adding details to our small moment stories in writing by asking the 5 Ws: who, what, when, where and why. We also worked with our writing buddy to help with editing conferences.

In reading, we have been building our stamina and everyone in the class read for 20 minutes straight on Wednesday! Wow! It was really terrific.  We will try to consistently read for 15 – 20 minutes while staying “in the zone” and really staying focused on our reading. This is something you can practice at home while completing your reading homework as well. 

For reading homework, please make sure that at least PART of each night’s reading is your child reading to you.  The percentage of them reading to you should be increasing a little bit each night to try to achieve 20 minutes each night. It is still beneficial for you to read aloud to them as well to help them with fluency, but this should be outside of their 20 minutes.  Reading logs are due every Friday. 

MATH FACTS: Please help your child practice their math facts at home for 5 – 10 minutes each night. We will be starting to have addition fact quizzes soon.  In Kindergarten they should have mastered their facts up to 5 and in first grade, we will be working up to ten.  Thanks so much for your help with this.

Coming up this week at school:

*We will be celebrating the Farm To You Fest Week. In our classroom we will are encouraging kids to have healthy snacks and will be making a class graph during our snack time, listing students who have a healthy snack choice for the day.  More details on Farm to You Fest and our food drive are on the Eagle website. 

* School pictures for our class will be taken on Wednesday October 9th from 11 – 11:15 am.  Please return your order form by Wednesday if you are interested in purchasing pictures.