Sept 18-22

We had a great first "official" week of learning together!  I am looking forward to seeing many of you at family night this week!

Just a few reminders (if you haven't already done so):
School fees are due in the office ASAP
Send a pair of tennis shoes to be kept at school for your child to wear for gym
Send a plain white t-shirt to be kept at school for an art shirt
**If you wish to be included in the school directory, please return the forms to school by Monday!

Important dates and reminders:

9/19: Family Night: Hot Dogs and How to Help Family Night
9/20: Picture Day- please send your order forms to school on or before this day
9/22: NO SCHOOL for students
9/25: Wear Badger gear
9/28: Packer Day
9/27: Kaukauna Homecoming Parade (more info to come)
9/29: Wear orange and black
10/8: Ride to Read
10/17: Heckrodt Field Trip

This week the entire school district will be having a "safety week."  You should have received information about this electronically via Infinite Campus messenger.  During this time the students and I will be participating in several drills to ensure we are all aware and comfortable with safety procedures.  We will have the following drills this week: fire drill, tornado drill, lockdown and hold drill and evacuation drill.
Some of these may be new or could possibly cause some anxiety or questions among the students.  Please know I will do my very best to explain everything we are doing to them and will make sure they know they are always safe at school.  If you have questions please feel free to contact myself or Mrs. Frischmann.

Here is a peek at our week:

Math: This week in math we will continue to represent a quantity that corresponds with a number.  We will do this through drawing as well as with various math tools.  We will begin to recognize that when we create a representation of a number we can add more to it or take things away from it and will learn the terms addition and subtraction.  We will also begin to work to see and know partners of a number (numbers that are added together to make a larger number).

Reading:This week we will welcome a new type of book to out reading workshop: Old Favorite Storybooks!  These books are stories the boys and girls have heard me read aloud several times and are ready to "reread" on their own.  They are by no means expected to read these verbatim, but instead will work to rely on story elements and pictures to support their attempts.  This type of work sets them up to really begin to understand the connection that words and pictures have in books.  It also gets us one step closer to reading conventionally.  I cannot wait to listen to the students read these beloved books!

Writing:We will continue to write teaching books this week and will really work to plan how our books will go page by page.  We will be working with a partner to ask and answer questions about our books as a way to add more and will work hard attempt to write words in our books by stretching them out and recording the sounds we hear.  Lastly, we will be using a checklist to make sure our writing is the best it can be...I know the boys and girls will feel so grown up doing this!

Social Studies:  Each person in our classroom has now chosen and illustrated a hope and dream for the school year!  We then created rules for our classroom that will help us reach those hopes and dreams.  This week we will practice what it looks, sounds and feels like to follow these rules and will also discuss what happens when we forget to follow the rules (which will happen, of course).  My hope for this is that students take greater ownership over the rules and grow to understand how to help one another follow them and to also understand how to fix or change things when we forget to follow a rule.