Hello everyone! I hope you all have been enjoying the fall weather! Before getting into this past week I just want to remind you that starting tomorrow we will be celebrating Spirit Week! Each day has a theme and I have reattached the flyer that was sent out from Mr. Barr. On Thursday, students were sent home with a school shirt provided by the PTSO that can be worn this coming Thursday for School Spirit Day!
This past week we focused on the letters Ss, Uu, Mm, and Rr! Students have been practicing listening to the first sound in a word to see if it matches the letter that we are focusing on. They have been doing a great job! DIBELS tests were also administered this week to see where students are at with their reading skills. Listening for and isolating the first sound in a word is one of the major skills on that test. The results of those test give us a starting point to see how students grow in their phonics knowledge throughout the year, help us determine their reading readiness, and help provide them with additional reading services if needed.
We also have been playing games such as alphabet match to practice identifying our letters, and we can even step it up a little and incorporate letter sounds into this game! Some students also got a chance to start reading some decodable books, which use picture clues and sight words that we have learned so students can easily read them.
We have several words up that students have learned and are continuing to review! Words like “the” and “am” are considered sight words and/or high frequency words. The difference being that sight words are words that students have to memorize because they don’t follow typical spelling and phonics rules, high frequency words are just words that appear often in the English language. I will be sending home a set of the words that we have been working on so that you all can practice these words at home along with the letters!
In class we practice finding some of these words in our morning message every day. We also will continue making sentences with these words.
These are one of the books we have read this past week, and the others that we will read more of this week! Kindergarten was so excited about the start of Fall and we have been discussing the ways the weather will change. We have been making many observations about the weather, and we even have learned that a scientist who studies the weather is called a meteorologist! Later this week will continue learning about all of the seasons. This is something we do during our morning meeting, where we also have been practicing our days of the week and our months of the year!
In Math this week we practiced ordering numbers 1 through 5. We use the words “counting order” and practiced rearranging mixed up numbers to put them back into counting order. We also introduced the words fewer/fewest, more/more, and equal. These are words that we will continue to learn and elaborate on. This upcoming week we will practice writing and identifying numbers 6 through 10.
In Social Studies we wrote a sentence about and drew pictures of our family. The students came up with some beautiful words about their families!
Now that students have been earning more and more tickets for good behavior, they have begun turning them in for prizes! This week a few students got the prize of flexible seating for a day. They got to choose a special kind of seat to use throughout the day instead of their regular chair. Flexible seating is a great option for students to be able to have some freedom, comfort, and ability to move their body throughout the day in a way that is not a distraction. Other students chose to have lunch with me for a day, which is always a fun treat for the both of us!
Students have been exploring many fun activities during morning work time and Free Play. One of the students’ favorite activities is to play with the uncooked macaroni pasta. They love to pretend they are working at a mac n’ cheese restaurant! It also was fun to watch students build this very tall tower with connecting blocks – they came up with the solution to use the stool to build the tower up even more all on their own!
Last weekend, Logan got to take home our class pet of the month – Penny! He got a chance to share the things they did together over the weekend. This weekend Laila got to take Penny home, and we can’t wait to hear all about their adventures!
Lastly, we celebrated two birthdays this week! To Logan and Tristan Neal, happy sixth birthday! Thank you to their parents for bringing in birthday treats for the class. They had so much fun celebrating their friends.
I’m looking forward to this upcoming, FUN week we have ahead of us! Please continue to check students’ folders daily for important information, their completed work, and more!
Have a great rest of your night!
Love,
Ms. V 🙂