We are so excited to be your child's teachers! We are in full swing - having completed 13 school days! The morning routines are all in place. Feel free to allow your child to come in on their own. All students get to sit with their friends and socialize from 8:00 am to 8:10 am. When the bell rings at 8:10 am the kiddos all head to their individual classrooms.
Our morning routine includes learning all the sounds and motions for our AlphaFriends. We have been working on all the letters and sounds as a whole. Starting Tuesday we will focus on a letter a day. Andy Apple is our first AlphaFriend. Each individual AlphaFriend has it's own unique song and action. The songs can be found on YouTube if you want to sing along at home.
All classrooms have started Daily 5. (A more academic version of centers.) Daily 5 has 5 components; Read to Self, Read to Some One, Listen to Reading, Work on Writing and Word Work. Each component is explicitly taught with clear teacher and student expectations. Right now each class has been working on Read to Self. Students read (either by reading the pictures, reading the words or retelling what they know about the story). This takes place while the teacher is teaching a small group. Right now we are building stamina!!! We are all up to around 5 minutes of students reading to self. We will build to 20 minutes!!
Lunch is going great! Students are self selecting lunches and are able to open their own milks! Most of them anyway. We encourage independence and a give it a try attitude! You'd be surprised how quickly they learn! Feel free to join us at 11:45 am if you'd like.
Water bottles are a must. Please, please send a water bottle. It makes it so much easier to encourage hydration with out taking away from academic time. Remember it's totally ok to leave the water bottle all week for the students to refill at school.
Our math focus has been on learning position words including left and right. We are working on plane shapes and will move into 3D shapes next week. We have used some wonderful math songs to compliment our hands on lessons. Check out anything Jack Hartman on YouTube for counting practice.
Recess is a great time to connect with new friends. We are still working on social skills - taking turns can be a challenge. We are also working on reporting vs. tattling. Thank you for sending your kiddos in tennis shoes rather than sandals or flip flops.
Dismissal is going smoothly. Students have learned where they are to go to get ready to dismiss. Mrs. Haun takes out North Walkers, Mrs. Strobel drops off Y-Club and takes out South Walkers, while Mrs. Davis and 5 AWESOME 5th grade helpers listen for day care vans, buses and car numbers! Thank you for teaching your child their car rider number. Even bigger thanks to all the kiddos that can fasten their own seat belts! I know all the teachers on car rider duty appreciate the swiftness that we can get the kids safely into the car and safely on their way.
We will be sending out the sight word powerpoint to all parent emails. This is a 3 second timed powerpoint of all kindergarten sight words. You child has been introduced to the following words already: red, purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, brown, black, white, pink, gray, an, a, I, see, at, to, like, he,and my. We use Heidi Songs to learn a lot of our sight words. You can check them out on YouTube.
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