The children settled into Room 202 nicely as we spent our first full week of school together! Last week we continued to practice classroom routines and also review expected behaviors. I couldn't be more pleased with how quickly everyone is acclimating to Kindergarten life!
Reminders
Boyden Folders
Please be sure to check your child's Boyden Folder (nightly if possible) for important notices and information. Any class work or announcements should be removed and kept at home unless otherwise noted. Thanks so much for your help!
P.E. Days
A friendly reminder that our class attends P.E. (gym) on Thursday afternoons and Friday mornings. Please be sure your child wears sneakers on those days. Due to safety concerns, children who do not have appropriate footwear will unfortunately not be allowed to participate.
Literacy Curriculum
This year the Kindergarten teachers are excited to pilot a brand new literacy program called Fundations! The Fundations curriculum is a multi-sensory and systemic phonics, spelling, and handwriting program which is geared for students in grade K-3. It is important to note that while we will be implementing the phonics, spelling, and handwriting components of Fundations, we will still be using the Scott Foresman Reading Street program for our story of the week, sight words, and comprehension instruction. As a result, you may notice that the phonics skills outlined on the Family Times pamphlets that are sent home each week do not always directly align with what we are doing in class. Be on the lookout for separate updates about the phonics skills we are practicing in Fundations!
Curriculum
Quality Kindergarten Work!
This week in class we discussed one element of quality Kindergarten work, coloring! We created a class poster which demonstrated what great Kindergarten coloring looks like, and these elements were reinforced as we completed our work throughout the week. This rubric shows that great coloring receives three stars when a child is able to stay inside the lines, make all the white space go away, and use the appropriate colors. While receiving three stars on your paper is the ultimate goal, it is important to note that not all children develop their fine motor skills at the same rate, and that this three star goal might not be reachable until later in the year.
Math
Last week in math we began a unit on Geometry! The children practiced identifying circles, squares, and rectangles and discussed the similarities and differences among the three.
Math centers were a great way to practice sorting, classifying, and identifying shapes while we completed various hands on activities!
Literacy
Lots of Literacy learning was happening in our classroom last week! We read the story The Little School Bus by Carol Roth which helped us answer the question, "How do children get to school?" We also reviewed the letters A, B, C, D, and E, and practiced reading the sight words "I'" and "am".
The children worked hard to identify the characters in The Little School Bus as well as recall the order in which they appeared in the story. We practiced using ordinal numbers 'first' to 'sixth' to show the sequence in which each character appeared!
Rhyming was another focus of my instruction last week, and the students enjoyed participating in both whole group and partner activities to help practice this skill!
Social Studies
In Social Studies we examined the American flag and learned the Pledge of Allegiance!
Media
Another highlight of our week was visiting the Media Center (library) for the first time! We met the Media Specialist, Mrs. Moses, and got a tour of Boyden's library. Please note that library day will be on Tuesdays. We are looking forward to checking out books for the first time next week!
I hope everyone enjoyed taking a peek at our week! I hope you check back soon to see all that is new in the wonderful world that is Room 202! :)
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