A Peek At Our Week!

 I hope everyone had a great weekend! There are many fun and exciting events coming up in the weeks ahead. Please see the announcements section below for some important details. 😊

Important Dates:

February 5th:

The 100th Day of School!

February 14th:

Valentines Day

(See below for details)

February 9th:

Early Release

Report Cards Available on Aspen/X2

February 19th-22nd

No School

February Vacation

Announcements:

The 100th Day of School! 

The 100th day of school will fall on Monday, February 5th. To celebrate, our class will be having a t-shirt fashion show! Please refer to the notice that was sent home with your child last week for specific details. You can also click here to view the notice. In need of an idea? Try one of these!

*Although the notice asks your child to bring their t-shirt to school by Friday, February 2nd, if it's easier for them to wear it to school on Monday the 5th that's fine with me! Please don't hesitate to let me know if you need help purchasing a plain t-shirt. A shirt you already have around the house is ok too!

Valentine's Day 💘

Our class will be celebrating Valentines Day on Wednesday, February 14th! As part of our celebration we will be exchanging valentines. Please click here for some helpful hints and tips for making our celebration an enjoyable one for your child. Please note food and candy is not allowed. A hard copy of this notice will be sent home this week. 

Star Student ⭐

Congratulations to Drew who was our Star Student last week! We look forward to learning about, and celebrating another friend from our class in the week ahead!

Awesome 80s Day!

Curriculum Update:

Fundations

Last week in Fundations we practiced reading the sight word has. We also continued to practice tapping or sliding CVC words such as hat, mug, and pot. Lastly, we reviewed how to write the uppercase letters O-Z. In the week ahead we will continue to practice CVC words and review the parts, and how to write a sentence.

The students above fist bump last week's sight word (and a review word) on their way out of the classroom. This is a fun and easy way to provide more exposure and practice to our weekly sight words. If you would like some fist bump cards to use at home please don't hesitate to let me know. I am more than happy to provide them!

Last week we added a sight word search to our practice routine. The children had a great time looking for the word "has"and seeing how many times they could find it.

Math

In math we continue to learn about measurement using nonstandard units! A highlight of our week was measuring the length of our foot using pasta, paper clips, unifix cubes, and plastic pennies!

Reader's Workshop

In Reader's Workshop we continue to apply our reading superpowers to decodable texts. Last week we also explored making connections with the main character of the story we are reading, and using our voices to reflect how the character is feeling.

Writer's Workshop

In Writer's Workshop the children are still working on their personal narrative/true stories. We are spending more time on stretching out the sounds we hear in words, and writing as many sounds (including vowels!) as we can. 

Thanks so much for taking a peek at our week! Please check back soon to watch us learn, grow, and play in the wonderful world that is K! 🍎📖🚌

A Peek At Our Week!

 I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! Please see below for a few highlights from our week. 😊

Announcements:

Emmanuel Day

Friday was truly a special day at Boyden School as we celebrated our friend Emmanuel on his 6th birthday. Emmanuel is a Kindergarten student in Mrs. Fields' class who is currently fighting cancer, and Friday was a very special day that was dedicated to him! Thank you SO much for all of your support and generous donations to Emmanuel's family. It is incredibly appreciated!

A little rain didn't stop us from cheering on Emmanuel as he arrived to school in a firetruck on Friday!

The Kindergarten students also enjoyed the special treat of shopping at the school store. All of the money collected will go directly to Emmanuel's family.💚

Curriculum Update:

Fundations

Last week in Fundations we practiced reading the sight word as. We also continued to practice tapping or sliding CVC words such as hat, mug, and pot. Lastly, we reviewed how to write the uppercase letters I-N.

We also applied our tapping/sliding skills to a new word family! Last week we practice reading words in the "at" family, and had a great time making "at" cats!

Reader's Workshop

In Reader's Workshop we continue to apply our reading superpowers to the books that we read. Last week the students were introduced to "reread power" and learned that readers go back and reread sentences to make them sound smoother and less choppy. The class has been doing a wonderful job during Read to Self time where they go back and reread previously introduced books from their book bag independently. It is so exciting to see the AMAZING progress the children are making with their reading skills at this time of year!

Writer's Workshop

In Writer's Workshop the class continued to work on their narrative/true stories. Many students have completed one whole story and have now moved on to write a new piece. Last week we reviewed the importance of including vowels in the words that we write in order to make them more "readable". We also practiced using writing checklists to make sure our word included all of the necessary components such as starting with an uppercase letter, ending with an ending mark, and including fingers spaces.

Math

Last week in math we continued to practice counting, adding and subtracting. We learned to play a fun new game called Foxes and Dens where the children added two numbers using a "counting up" strategy. This means if they rolled the numbers 5 and 2, they would say "5, 6, 7" instead of starting at one, counting to 5, then counting up two more. We also played a game called Beat You to Twenty where the students rolled a number cube and added that number of unifix cubes to their tower. The first played to 20 wins! 

To make introducing Beat You to Twenty even more engaging, we used the Touch View! For this game we played students vs. teachers. Mrs. Dacko and I had a pretty good lead for a while, but the students came from behind and secured a win at the end!

It was also an exciting week as our class had the highest number of puzzles completed in ST Math for the entire school! Mrs. Rinaldi awarded us with the giant JiJi to keep in our classroom for the upcoming week, and it serves as a great reminder and motivator to keep completing our puzzles! 

Social Studies

In Social Studies we discussed the important contributions of Martin Luther King Jr. The students watched a portion of Dr. King's "I Have a Dream Speech" and learned about his life through our Let's Find Out magazine. 

Science

It was an exciting time in Science last week as we visited Mrs. Arnold's first grade classroom to learn about camoflauge! We watched a great Mystery Doug science video together, then went hunting for butterflies that the first grade students had camoflauged in their classroom. It was a great way to end the week!

Thanks so much for taking a peek at our week. Please check back soon to watch us learn, grow, and play in the wonderful world that is K! 😊

A Peek At Our Week!

 I hope everyone had a wonderful long weekend! A friendly reminder that class is back in session tomorrow, Tuesday, January 17th. I'm looking forward to seeing all my Kindergarten friends!

Important Dates:

January 20th:

Emmanuel Day

See Details Below

Announcements:

Emmanuel Day

This Friday, January 20th will be "Emmanuel Day" at Boyden School. Emmanuel Urrea is a kindergarten student in Mrs. Fields’ class. Before arriving at Boyden, Emmanuel was diagnosed with cancer. He went through a series of successful treatments and had been in remission. Unfortunately, Emmanuel's cancer has returned and he has been going through a series of intensive treatments that have prevented him from being in school on a regular basis. We are asking that on January 20th, the students and staff wear GREEN (one of his favorite colors) to school to support Emmanuel. Emmanuel will be visiting Boyden that day and what is extra special is that January 20th is also Emmanuel's 6th birthday.

As part of "Emmanuel Day" the Kindergarten classes will be invited to participate in Friday's school store (school store is normally for students in grades 1-5). Also, ALL of the proceeds from the School Store that day will be going directly to Emmanuel's family. If your child does not want anything from the School Store but still wants to donate...no problem! We will have a container in the front lobby for students to donate. This is a day for the Boyden School to show their support for Emmanuel and his family. Please do not hesitate to let me know if you have any questions! 

Quiet Time

Over the past several weeks we have restructured how Quiet Time looks in our classroom. While this is still a quiet, relaxing time where students adjust back to the classroom after lunch and prepare for the busy afternoon, more options such as drawing, puzzles, and finishing work at the tables has also been included during this time. As a result, many students have not been using their quiet time towels as often. Starting this week, Quiet Time towels will now be optional in our classroom. Students who do choose to bring a towel to school will still have it returned home on Friday for washing.

Curriculum Update:

Fundations

Last week in Fundations we practiced reading the sight word can. We also continued to practice our "tapping" skills and became more comfortable with applying them to various CVC words. Additionally, we began to review how we write our uppercase letters. While we spent an entire week learning how to write each lowercase letter at the beginning of the year, our uppercase review is moving MUCH quicker, and we are practicing how to write two letters each day!

Last week our class reviewed the sight word an, and learned that this little word can be found inside many bigger words! We took the time to brainstorm bigger words with the word "an" such as fan, man, ban, and tan, and learned that all of these words (and many more!) belong to what we call a word family!  The class then practiced reading words in the "an" word family as they created their own an vans during center time. 

Reader's Workshop

We continued to practice applying our reading superpowers to new stories last week in Reader's Workshop! We also added two new superpowers, thinking power and fix it power. Thinking power encourages students to not just read the words on each page of a book, but to make predictions, comments on what they notice, and make connections. Fix it power requires students to monitor their reading and go back to "fix it" when their reading doesn't sound right, look right, or make sense. 

The students above practice applying their reading superpowers as they partner read! 

Writer's Workshop

Last week in Writer's Workshop the student's continued to work on their personal narrative/true stories. They learned that writers make their books "readable" by remembering to include finger spaces and as many letters as possible in the words that they write. We have also been exploring other conventions of sentence writing such as beginning each sentence with a capital letter and ending with a punctuation mark.

Math

It was an exciting time in math last week as we began to explore number lines! We learned that numbers on a number line must appear in sequential order, and played many fun games that helped us practice this skill. 

On Friday, we welcomed Boyden's math coach, Mrs. Rinaldi, into our classroom as she introduced January's ST Math incentive known as the Winter Waddle! Over the next few weeks we will monitoring our class' ST Math participation percentage, and recording it on our class chart in the hopes of winning various prizes! While your child is welcome to do ST Math at home, please know that this is completely optional as ample time will be provided at school for them to meet their weekly goal.

The class got to vote on which JiJi we wanted to put on our poster! We voted to use the birthday JiJi for the next few weeks.

Thanks so much for taking a peek at our week! Please check back soon to watch us learn, grow, and play in the wonderful world that is K!

A Peek At Our Week!

 I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. It was SO nice to finally see the sun again! Last week was a busy one as we settled back into our daily schedule and routines. It was so busy that I didn't take many pictures (my apologies!). 

Important Dates:

January 13th:

No School

Professional Development Day

January 16th:

No School

MLK Day

Announcements:

Quiet Time Towels

Quiet time towels were sent home for washing on Friday. Please return your child's clean towel to school tomorrow (Monday). Thank you so much for your help!

Movie Project

We were SO excited to welcome three students from Walpole High last week as they came to scope out our classroom for their upcoming movie project! Filming in tentatively scheduled to begin in February, and we couldn't be more thrilled to be a part of their movie. Please be sure to sign and return the permission slip that was sent home before the winter break if you are comfortable with your child appearing on screen. Thank You!

Fun fact: One of the screen writers was a first grade student of mine MANY years ago. She is now a senior!! 

Curriculum Update

Fundations

Last week in Fundations we practiced reading the sight word an. The children were also introduced to the concept of "tapping out" the sounds they hear in words. Click here to learn more about tapping!

Reader's Workshop

It was an exciting time in Reader's Workshop last week as we began Unit 2 in our Lucy Calkins curriculum! This unit focuses on developing our reading superpowers, or the different strategies we can use when encountering unknown words. Last week's superpowers were snap/sight word power, pointer power, and slide/tapping power.  I am looking forward to supporting the children as they develop and apply their reading super powers during Reader's Workshop for the remainder of the school year!

The students above practice reading vowel, consonant, vowel words (also known as CVC words) such as mat, pig, and hot. At this point in the year the majority of students are using their slide/tapping power to read these words. With frequent exposure and practice, quicker and more automatic reading of these words will develop.

Costumes always make learning new things more fun! We had a great time practicing our first three reading super powers this week!

Writer's Workshop

In Writer's Workshop last week we also began Unit 2 which focuses on personal narrative, or true stories. The class learned that all stories must have a beginning, middle, and end, and enjoyed writing pieces about real life experiences they've had. We will continue to wwork on our true stories this week in class!

Math

It was a busy week in math as we completed Unit 3 in our Bridges curriculum. We continued to practice our addition and subtraction skills as well as doubling numbers in our lessons. At the end of the week we also circled back to tally marks as a way to count groups of five, and began exploring numbers that, when added together, make the number five (i.e. 1 and 4, 5 and 0, 2 and 3). 

It was teachers vs. students on Friday as we played a new tally game! Each team took a handful of popsicle sticks and organized them like tally marks. We then spun a spinner and whichever group had the outcome spun (greater or less) won that round. The teachers came out victorious in Friday's whole class game, but I know the students are eager to take on the title of "winner" when they play the game with partners during Work Stations in the upcoming week. 

                              Nothing like a little free choice time with friends on a rainy Friday afternoon!

Thanks so much for taking a peek at our week! Please check back soon to watch us learn, grow, and play in the wonderful world that is K!