Dec 18-22

The kids have been having so much fun spending their recesses in the snow!  Just a quick reminder to label your child's snow accessories...you'd be amazed at how many black and pink snow pants and gloves pass through this hallway each day!  Due to the time of year, this will be an exciting week for kids!  We will keep our learning focused, but also make time for some holiday fun!


Important Dates and Reminders:
December 21: PJ day
December 22-January 1: NO SCHOOL

Math: Those tricky teen numbers will continue to be one thing we focus on this week, as we look for groups of ten ones and then add on any extra ones to determine quantity.  We are learning it is easy to see a group of ten when it is organized in two groups of 5 or a long group of 10, but tricky when we are looking at a random group of objects (see picture below).

 We will also work hard this week to show, recognize, understand and name the partners of numbers 2-6. Please see this note for an explanation of partners and how we use this term in math.

Reading: This week we will continue super charging our reading super powers!  We will focus on using book talk power and partner power to not only read new and challenging books, but to really understand what the books are teaching or how the story goes.  We will also work on making predictions and rereading when something doesn't make sense to us.

Writing: We will be wrapping up our true stories unit this week.  We will learn to revise and edit so our writing is readable to others.  To do this we will use a checklist that includes revising and editing tasks and will also work with a partner to ask and answer questions about our story.

Social Studies: This week we will participate in some holiday activities from the new holidays we learned about.  We will be playing the dreidel game and making Kwanzaa mats.  We will also have some Christmas fun by writing our own song to a familiar Christmas tune!

Dec 11-15

This  month's school focus is BE Caring!  Last week classrooms buddied up with another grade level classroom and watched and discussed some videos that showed various acts of caring.  Students then drew or wrote what caring was to them and this display was created.  The kids amazed us with what they had to say about caring for others and why it is important at this time of the year and always!!

Here is our school newsletter for December.

Important dates and reminders:

12/12: NO SCHOOL
12/13: Holiday Wear Day
12/21: PJ Day
12/22-1/1: NO SCHOOL

Here is a peek at our week:

Math:  We wrapped up unit 2 with a test on Friday.  I will be meeting with each student to go over the test and celebrate success and fix any mistakes (that's how our brains grow).  Keep your eyes peeled for tests to come home in folders this week.  We will also being unit 3.  The main focus of this unit will be: developing awareness of numbers 11-20 and recognizing these numbers as groups of 10 tens and extra ones.  As in all units we will continue deepen our understanding of addition and subtraction and showing expressions that match story problems as well as writing our own story problems to demonstrate our knowledge of addition and subtraction equations.  We will also work to understand and become more fluent with partners of numbers.  

Reading: We have been working incredibly hard to read unknown words by using picture support, syntax (how a book sounds) and the letters sounds at the beginning and end of a word.  This week we will continue to check our reading by asking all three of these things at the same time.  We will learn that when books have more words and more detailed pictures we need to study the pictures more closely to really understand what is happening to help us read the words.  Finding our snap words in disguise (looking, sees, looked) will also be a powerful strategy we will work on this week.  Thank you for taking the time to read with your child each night and to return their books and book bags to school each day!  Your support is so appreciated!

Writing: This week our writing focus will be on revision.  We will add details in our pictures to make our stories come to life and will add beginnings to our stories.  We will also be introduced to flaps as tool to quickly revise and add on to our writing.  We will even use a different color pen to revise so the changes we make to improve our writing can be visible to ourselves and others.  This is serious and important work!

Social Studies: Our holiday unit is up and running!  This week we selected and studied 4 holidays we didn't know much about.  Those holidays were:  Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Cinco de Mayo and Veteran's Day (very eclectic, I know).  This week we will study the familiar holidays we selected: Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter and St. Patrick's Day.   Each day we have been reading a non-fiction text closely and then discussing what we learned AND writing about it!  The kids are blowing me away with conversations and writing they are doing around these topics!

Fundations: Last week we wrapped up our first unit in Fundations.  Our next unit will focus using letter sounds to more easily spell new words.  To do this we will "tap" words to hear beginning, middle and end sounds.  This is something we have been doing in writer's workshop, but now we will be doubling up on our practice with this.  Check out this video to see "word tapping' in action.  It is a first grade video, but explains the process well!

Dec 4-8

Thank you all so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to join us for Afternoon with Astronauts!  The students were elated to share their science knowledge with you and, of course, loved being dressed as (and eating) like astronauts!

Just a quick reminder to have family night RSVP's in by tomorrow.  It was a quick turn around this month, but we want to make sure we have enough pizza for everyone :).

Here is the December lunch menu.

Important Dates and Reminders:
12/5 Christmas Parade- NDLC families can meet by Bank of Kaukauna to watch together
12/7: PJ day and PJ's, Pizza and Publishing Family Night 5:30-7:00
12/12: NO SCHOOL
12/13: Holiday Wear Day
12/21: PJ Day
12/22-1/1: NO SCHOOL

Here is a peek at the week:

Math: This will be our last week working in Unit 2.  We will be working in math centers this week to better finalize and consolidate the concepts we have learned while working in this unit.  Our math centers will be:

• Nearby Numbers: using forward and backward number sequence to fill in a series of missing numbers. This will help us to count on from a given number which is an early addition strategy. 
• Break Apart Sticks and Chips: representing a quantity using math chips and then placing a break apart stick to create 2 groups and recognizing how they work together as partners to make a number and then writing an equation to match
• +1/-1 dice game: using a dice, game piece and 1-10 number parade to practice automaticity with +1 and -1 equations and to better understand the connection these equations have to forward and backward counting.
• 5 frame subtraction:  filling a 5 frame with 5 dots/circles. rolling a die and then crossing out to show subtraction and writing an equation to match.  This will help us with our subtraction fluency within 5. 

If you are looking for some great at home activities to support the Kindergarten math standards we will focus on all year.  Here is a fantastic resource.  As always, let me know if you have questions or need specific feedback.

Reading: At the end of last week we learned some important questions to ask ourselves when solving new words: 1."Does it make sense?" To answer this question we need to rely on the picture and make sure that what we are reading matches what the photo or illustration is showing in our book. 
2. "Does it sound right?"  To answer this question we need to listen to ourselves as we read and make sure what we are saying sounds like a book.  This can be tricky as 5 and 6 year olds are sometimes still developing language skills. 
This week we will rely on letters at the beginning and end of words to ask the question "Does it look right?"  For example, if a student reads the word dog, they are able to point and notice the word begins with d.  These three questions are integral to self monitoring our reading and we will work hard with these concepts over the next several months.

Writing: This week we will use all we know about readable writing to "publish" a story to showcase at our family night this week.  We will specifically be working on strategies to hear more sounds in a word we are writing by using a partner to help us check our writing and to use a resource when stretching out words.

Social Studies: We are sad to see our space unit come to an end, but we will begin a new inquiry unit into holidays.  This week we will use a calendar to notice the many holidays that are celebrated across a year and will then identify holidays we already know about and those we'd like to learn more about.  Overall, we will be choosing 8 total holidays to study from now until winter break.  Stay tuned to hear the holidays we choose!