February 26-March 2

I hope the students enjoyed a few fun-filled winter days off!  I also hope this month will be more healthy for all!  Spring is so close!

Important Dates and Reminders:
2/27: Family Night: Music and Masterpieces- 6pm
3/2: Dress as your favorite book character
3/5: Culver's night 5-8pm
3/9: 1/2 day 11:30 Dismissal


Here's a peek at the week:

Math: This week we will be introduced to a new way to organize partners of numbers. 
It is called a math mountain. 
We will use these to show partners of numbers we know well, as well as partners of larger numbers.  Mathematicians will also be introduced to the 3D shapes: cone, cube cylinder and sphere.

Reading: One thing that sets non-fiction books apart from fiction books is that they contain more specialized vocabulary.  This week readers will keep track of topic words they find while reading non-fiction books.  They will use the pictures and words in the book to understand what the words mean and will teach them to their reading partner.  Each reader will create an expert word  list with sketches to show word meanings.

Writing:This week we will focus on elaboration: ways to add more to our writing.   We will be using text features like diagrams, bold words and definitions, comparisons and examples like we have seen authors try in the books we have read.  We will also begin to make sure we not only give information on each page, but say WHY that information is important.

Science/Social Studies: This week we will take some time for the students to learn more about the SeeSaw app and how they can use it to share their learning.  Up until this point I have been doing all of the posting, but I think the kids are ready to share the responsibility!  They will learn how to log in and post things to their profile and will practice taking pictures and videos for SeeSaw with the Ipads.  

February 19-23

It was a fun and exciting week in Kindergarten!  Check out some photos from our action packed week!  Thanks to our parent volunteers for helping 100 day run smoothly!

 Proud to be 100 days smarter!

 How many sits can you do in 100 seconds?

 How many rings can you string in 100 seconds?

 Block stacking challenge in 100 seconds!

 How many hula hoops spins can you get in 100 seconds?

Working together to stack 100 cups!

Look at these love bugs!!

Important Dates and Reminders:

February 22&23: No School
February 27: Family Night: Music, Melodies and Masterpieces- 6:00pm (notice the time change)


Here is a peek at the (short)  week:

Math: Mathematicians will be working on inspecting equations this week. We will discuss how the equal sign can come at the beginning of an equation (16=10+6) or at the end of the equation (10+6=16). The goal is for students to start to understand that equations are made of part-part-whole. We will also start to build fluency with subtraction. Mathematicians will discover that they can use the same strategies for subtracting as they did for adding. These strategies include:

• Using their fingers
• Drawing a picture
• Building it with tools
• Telling a math story
• Visualizing a math story

These are all great ways to start when working toward fluency!

Reading: The nonfiction books have been a huge hit in our room! It's so fun to listen to the students ask questions and share knowledge about the topics they are reading about. This week, we will take that work a step further by asking students to share the information by retelling, acting like a reporter, and having conversations about their books with partners. We will use the following conversation starters to help students carry on with their partner.

• I wonder....
• Maybe...
• I agree/disagree because...

We remind students that a having a conversation is like riding a seesaw; you take turns going back and forth!

Writing: There will be a strong connection between reading and writing this week! As nonfiction readers, students learned that they can ask questions while reading and even try to answer them! Since we are writing nonfiction books, we can use this chart to add more to our writing as well.

 First, writers will read through their books, asking themselves if they answered questions readers might have on each page. Then students will sit with their reading partners, read the books they wrote, and allow their partners to stop and ask questions--just like we did in reading! The partners will work together to try to answer the questions to add more to their piece of writing.

Social Studies:  We will use this week to continue working on social skills with an emphasis on being kind. Students will take a self evaluation and think about how they can be a better friend, work hard to follow the rules, etc. The assessment looks like this:

Feb 12-16

Well, after school on Monday your child will officially be 100 days smarter!  We will have a fun day together and will have more fun and excitement with Valentine's Day on Wednesday!  I just don't know how Kindergarten could get more exciting!

Important Dates and Reminders:

Feb. 12th: 100th Day of School- Dress like you are 100 years old

Feb. 14th:  Pink, White and Red Day and Valentine exchange at school 

Feb 16th: Funky Friday

February 22nd  and 23rd: NO SCHOOL
February 27th: Family Night 5:30- Music and Masterpieces 

Math: This week we will begin Unit 4.  The main concepts of this unit are finding partner numbers for 6-10 and identifying 3 dimensional shapes.  The unit also reinforces teen number composition and decomposition.  Please note that any partner work within 6-10 is expected to be done with math tools and drawings and students are by no means expected to be fluent in knowing their facts or partners to 10.  We will continue to work toward automaticity with addition and subtraction within 5.  Did you know there are 21 addition facts from 0-5 that students need to be automatic with?!

Reading:This week we kick off a new reading unit called Growing Expertise in Little Books.  This unit has a focus on non-fiction reading and really reading to gain understanding and learn from the books we read.  This week we will sort our classroom library to get all of our informational books organized so they are easier for us to shop for.  We will learn that as we read about a topic we become experts on it and learn to share that information with others by telling the main topic of a book and giving key details learned in the book. We will also work on stopping and asking questions while we read.

Writing:Our writing unit will be greatly supported by our reading work as we will begin a new unit called All About Books.  The goal of this unit will be able to write across one topic for several pages including key ideas and details.  Students will be able to show off their knowledge of personal interest and will take such ownership over being topic experts.  This week we will create book covers to keep track of our writing ideas and will be reading many All About books to help us understand the many ways we can show all we know about a topic.

Science/Social Studies:  Students will present their plant and animal projects they worked on this week.  Stay tuned to see these on SeeSaw.  We will also take some time this week to do some close reading of story books that have a focus on friendship and problem solving.  These are important things to discuss at this time of the year as students are very comfortable with each other and need reinforcement to understand how their actions can impact others.

Feb 5-9

Enrollment for the 2018-2019 school year is underway and we have a few spots available in Kindergarten! We find that word of mouth is the best way to market our school!

If you have friends or family with upcoming Kindergarten-aged students, please share what you love about our school! We will be having an open house to see Kindergarten in action on Thursday, February 8th from 8:15-9:00 or 2:15-3:00. Feel free to invite any families that have expressed interest in our school.

As always, families can also call Mrs. Frischmann at 766-6116 to set up individual tours.


Important Dates and Reminders:
Feb. 12th: 100th Day of School- please send 100 snack items by Friday :)
Feb. 14th:  Pink, White and Red Day
Feb 16th: Funky Friday
February 22nd  and 23rd: NO SCHOOL

Math: So I realize that in almost every blog I mention the students being fluent within 5 for addition and subtraction. This is a huge and important skill for Kindergarten that requires LOTS of repeated practice.  To be truly fluent with math facts research says students need to be shown an equation and solve it within 3 seconds without the use of counting, fingers or tools.  This is hard work!
 Each day we do things during math time to build our fluency.  The image below shows math skills in an "iceberg model" to show the different strategies students need to use and master before they reach the "tip" of the iceberg, which is seeing an equation and solving it fluently.

The games we play and activities we do focus heavily on the informal and pre-formal section of the iceberg because we want students to relate the visual representations they create with tools and see on game pieces directly to an equation so they can solve them quickly.  I hope this sheds some light on why I often repeat myself when talking about fluency activities! 

Reading: Readers learn to be problem solvers! Even when they get to unknown words in their books, they can use lots of strategies to figure out a word. Here are some of the ways we solve words:



Writing:Writers will pick one piece of writing to publish this week. They will use the following charts to help them revise and edit their books.

On Friday, we are inviting our 2nd grade buddies in to listen to our how to books and test out the directions! The kindergartners will create props for their buddies to to use while following the directions of their how to books. It will be quite the celebration!

Science: This week in science we will put together our knowledge of plants and animals and will select a topic we'd like to learn more about.  We will then do some research on our topic using books and iPads and find a way to present our learning to the class.  Some options might be: making a poster or writing a book.