I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend and staying warm in this chilly weather! Unfortunately last week got away from me and I didn't take as many pictures as usual. If your child is not featured in this week's blog post I will be sure to include them next week. My apologies!
Important Dates:
February 9th:
Valentine's Due
February 12th:
Valentine Exchange
Report Cards Posted on Aspen/X2
February 15th-19th:
Vacation Week
No School
Announcements:
3 Star Work!
Over the past several weeks we have been discussing the importance of putting our best effort into our class work and completing what I call "Good Quality Kindergarten Work". One way this has been reinforced is through the use of our classroom Proud Wall which features student work that is especially neat and colorful. Starting this week I am also hoping to motivate the students by starting a numbered star system when checking the activities they have completed in class. The following system will be used for "grading" your child's work:
*1 Star: Work is incomplete, messy, and/or includes only one color
**2 Stars: Work is complete, neat (to the best of your child's abilities), and uses three colors
***3 Stars: Work is complete, neat, uses more than three colors, demonstrates that a significant amount of time and effort has been put into the activity.
It is important to note that, particularly in the first few weeks, 3 stars will only been given on rare occasions for exemplary work. It is my hope that this new system will be motivating to the students while also providing families with ongoing feedback. Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions or concerns!
Curriculum Update:
Fundations
Last week in Fundations we completed Unit 2! In this unit we began "tapping" the sounds in CVC words such as hat, pig, and pot, and practiced writing our uppercase letters as well. The students were also introduced to three new sight words last week in, at, and up. We will continue to practice these words during the upcoming week, while also learning how the words at and it can have their own word families!
Reader's Workshop
Wonderful reading continues to happen in Room 202 and I couldn't be more impressed! Last week we practiced using letter-sound knowledge to help us read unknown words. One way we applied this skill was by reading alphabet books! We used our letter-sound knowledge to determine that "pants" would not belong in a book about the letter J, and rather the word/picture must be "jeans"! On Friday, Mrs. Miles introduced us to the concept of consonant clusters/blends and we practiced reading words such as sled, crab, and tree.
In math we worked on teen number writing last week! We spent a great deal of time talking about the formation of each number, and carefully practicing our teen numbers through a variety of interactive activities such as Spin and Trace and Roll and Write. We also used these fun rhymes for a little extra motivation. Click here to read them!
Writer's Workshop
Our practice with "How To" writing continued in Writer's Workshop! While we had previously been doing mostly shared writing, last week the children started writing their own "How Tos" independently. It was SO much fun to read each child's work which included topics such as How to Surf, How to do a Flip, and How to Get Ready for Bed, just to name a few!
Thanks so much for taking a peek at our week! Please check back soon to see all that is new in Room 202! :)
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