Author: Anna Williamson

September 23, 2022 Class News 

It was a very busy week in kindergarten! We were so happy to participate in the Jog-A-Thon on Wednesday.  The kids loved running and seeing how many laps they could complete!  Thank you to everyone for your participation!

Sight Words: Our two sight words this week were inand to.We will continue to learn two sight words per week. Next week we will learn is and you.

Phonics: During our Words Their Way phonics lesson this week we learned all about the letters /r/ and /s/. We cut our “sort” cards, sorted them by beginning sounds /r/ and /s/, glued them on a graphic organizer and lastly drew and spelled our own words that begin with r and s. Take a look at your child’s spelling coming home in their Friday folder.

Next week we will review letters /b/, /m/, /r/, and /s/. 

Handwriting: This week we have focused on lowercase r and s as well as numbers 1-9! We are also reviewing our uppercase letters. If your family chooses to do homework, letter and number formation is a great skill to practice at home! Ask your child to show you the “hat line, belt line, and boot line.”

Literacy Centers: We worked hard in our literacy centers this week! In ability-based groups of 5-6 students, we rotated through iPad center, independent reading center, sight word center, phonics center (this week students used magnets to put the alphabet in order), and guided reading group with me! This week we learned how our centers will work for the year and practiced our center rules. These rules are: no talking, work the whole time and clean up when you are finished. Along with using magnets to put the alphabet in order, students created alphabet puzzles, matching a picture to the letter it starts with, along with practicing our upper and lowercase alphabet writing. 

Writers Workshop: Writer’s Workshop has already become a favorite time of day for many kiddos! I feel blessed to have the privilege of guiding our class of young writers. We practiced using three steps to write a story – think of a story and picture it in your mind, draw the pictures, write the words. Ask your child what ‘best guess spelling’ is and see if they can show you how to write all the sounds they hear in a word. 

Math: We are working towards articulating our ideas clearly by using complete sentences to explain our math thinking during morning calendar. We also continued our work with our counting collections! Students counted a new bag of items this week and recorded how many items they counted on their recording sheet. We continue to grow as mathematicians in differentiated groups by counting, writing, and showing numbers 0-10.

Key math words: Count, equal to, greater than, less than, number, zero, one, two, three, four, and five.

Science: We observed signs of fall! Some students noticed coldness, leaves changing colors, flowers drooping, animals searching for warmth, and more clouds in the sky. We are empowered disciples!

Second Step: In this week’s lesson, we learned that mistakes are a natural part of the learning process. We learned that we can encourage our classmates through using kind words, and we can also encourage ourselves through kind self-talk! We brainstormed kind phrases which may include, “You got this”, “Keep trying”, and “I know you can do it”. We will practice kind self-talk when encouraging our classmates, along with ourselves when we make mistakes.

Religion: This week we dove into our Religion workbooks! We began Lesson 2, learning about Jesus’s Heavenly Father. We also read the book A Picture of God, 3 in 1, where students learned that there are three persons, but one God. Ask your child if they can tell you the three persons! 

We continue to show we are Christ-centered people by making the sign of the cross before and after every prayer. We are mastering our prayers – Guardian Angel, Prayer Before Meals and Prayer After Meals. We continue to practice being mindful using our high five breathing.

Common Core Standards we’re working on:

• I can read common sight words.
• I can read the words in a book in the right order.
• I can recognize and make rhyming words.
• I can say the most common sound for each consonant in the alphabet.
• I can draw or write to help me share what I think.
• I can print lots of upper and lowercase letters.
• I can write numbers from 0-20.
• I can understand that the last thing I count tells the number of things in a group.
• I can name the number for each thing in a group as I count them.

Important Dates:

• Monday, October 10th – Dress Uniform, All School Mass
• Friday, October 14th – No School, Teacher In-Service
• Tuesday, October 18th – Individual Portrait Day
• Tuesday, November 1st – All Saints Day Mass, Dress Uniform
• Wednesday, November 9th – Parent-Teacher Conferences (Students do not attend)
• Thursday, November 10th – Parent-Teacher Conferences (Students do not attend)
• Friday, November 11th – No School, Veteran’s Day

September 16, 2022 Class News 

We have had a busy week in kindergarten! Your children are asking questions and are excited to learn. Check out what we have been up to this week!

Sight Words:  Our two sight words this week were andand a.  We will continue to learn two sight words per week.  Next week we will learn to and in.  We love noticing our sight words in books and around our classroom.  The kids are discovering that sight words are everywhere!

Phonics:  During our Words Their Way phonics lesson this week we learned all about the letters /b/ and /m/.  We cut our “sort” cards, sorted them by beginning sounds /b/ and /m/ and glued them in our workbooks. We even tried our best to spell the words we thought of. We are active learners!

Next week will be beginning sounds /r/ and /s/.

Handwriting:  We love learning how to correctly form letters and numbers in kindergarten!  This week we have focused on both lowercase and uppercase b and m.  We are also practicing numbers 1-5! Ask your child about “hat line, belt line, and boot line.” If your family chooses to do homework, letter and number formation is a great skill to practice at home!  Refer to resources in your child’s Friday Folder for guidance.

Writers Workshop: We began our Writer’s Workshop this week! Twice a week we think of ideas, write and illustrate stories and to follow our school SLE: An active learner who articulates ideas clearly, creatively, and effectively. This week we learned that writing is just telling on paper. We practiced using three steps to write a story – think of a story or something you know a lot about, picture it in your mind, draw the pictures, write the words. We focused on “best guess spelling” and really emphasized to sound out each word phonetically. We even learned to label our illustrations! Ask your child about their own writing journals and what they wrote about!

Literacy Centers:  We continued to work on our literacy centers this week! Students are working in small groups focused on fine motor skills. They are working together, sharing, and taking turns!

Math: Kindergarten math is all about number sense! In the beginning of class we start with a “warm up” by looking at dot cards. We show with our hands the number, say the number, and share our thinking. When we divide into our math groups, 2-3 groups work with a teacher, while the remaining group(s) have the chance to use hands-on manipulatives (dice, dominoes, unifix cubes, etc.), or a “dessert game.” Then we will switch. Our math specialist, Mrs. Olsen comes in on Wednesdays and will work with small groups as well!

This week we also began counting collections! Counting collections are when students get fun, hands-on items to count. These items range from dinosaurs to gold coins. Once students have counted all the items in their bag, they have to record the number of items on their recording sheet. Counting collections strengthens students’ one-to-one counting, as well as their recording skills. We will continue counting collections throughout the school year to help us become better counters! 

Social Studies:  We continue to talk about how everyone in our class is unique and has different names. Even though we are all different, we are a part of our kindergarten family. This week, we read the story, A My Name is Alice to facilitate our name study. Using the book as inspiration, students created a self-portrait and wrote their names in a sentence with a word that begins with the same letter as their name. For example, “M my name is Miss Williamson and I like marshmallows!” Take a peek in our classroom to find your child’s self-portrait!

We continued to talk about how everyone in our class is unique and has different names this week. Even though we are all different, we are a part of our kindergarten family and more importantly the church community.  We read the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and made our own coconut tree with the letters of our name attached!

Second Step: This week we learned two reasons to pay attention: to learn, and to stay safe. We want to learn and pay attention in school, as well as paying attention in places like the kitchen, and when crossing the street!

Religion: This week we read the story “How Full is your Bucket?” and learned the difference between bucket filling and bucket dipping. Bucket filling is when we fill others buckets through giving them compliments, asking to play with them, or saying kind words. Bucket dipping is when dip into others buckets when we say unkind words or exclude others from playing. Ask your child other examples of bucket filling and bucket dipping, and how they can be bucket fillers! 

Mrs. Mansfield, a middle school teacher, taught our students a mini-lesson about growth mindset and the brain. They learned about how their brains can grow, just like our bodies, and each time we practice a new skill we are forming new neuropathways. But growing these pathways isn’t always easy, so what do we do when we feel frustrated and want to give up? We “hit the pause and say YET”- because we may not be able to do the new skill YET, but if we keep trying- we can do it! 

Common Core Standards we’re working on:

• I can read common sight words.
• I can draw or write to help me share what I think.
• I can print lots of upper and lowercase letters.
• I can write numbers from 0-20.

Important Dates:

• Wednesday, Sept 21^st – Jog-A-Thon!  
  • We will be running from 10:00-10:30! Come join us! 
• Sunday, September 25^th– Blessing of the Backpacks Mass

Reminders:

• Please send a 5×7 or 4×6 photo of your immediate family in the next week (by Friday 9/23). We will be using these for a class project. 

September 9, 2022 Class News

Your children are such a treat to have in the classroom! It has been a joy getting to know them this past week. They are adjusting well and are happy learners! This week we focused on learning and practicing our classroom and school procedures as well as modeling expectations.  Ask your child about our class marble jar, table points, punch cards and “lips and hips”! At our morning meeting, we learn about the days of the week and discuss the weather and how it changes over time. Ask your child how to sing our calendar song! This week we participated in PE, music, Spanish, and art class for the first time! The class enjoyed our specialist time very much!  We also had a fire drill this week. Ask your child what we do to stay safe in these situations.

Sight Words: Our two sight words this week were the and of. We will continue to learn two sight words per week. Our goal is to learn 50 by the end of Kindergarten! Sight words are words that are most commonly seen in text, that most often break the rules (they are not spelled phonetically), so we learn them by sight!

Phonics: We began whole group spelling lessons with our curriculum, Words Their Way. This week we learned how to sort! Our focus was “Concept sort: Animal and Not an Animal.” We cut out our sort cards that had different animals on them (horse, turtle, etc.) and non-animals (flower, tree, etc.), sorted them, glued them on a graphic organizer and finally created our own drawings and words on the back page. Every week, we will have a new “phonics focus”- next week will be beginning sounds /b/ and /m/.

Literacy Centers: Literacy center time is another part of our literacy instruction. Students work in small groups of 4-5. Once we complete assessments for each child, these groups will be ability based. The literacy centers are – guided reading group (with me, where we will practice reading accuracy and fluency with ability leveled books), sight word group (led by Ms. Wakefield), independent reading in our class library, iPads (we use ‘Teach Me Kindergarten’ app and ‘Little Writers’), and phonics center (hands on phonics practice with weekly changing tools). We look forward to having parent volunteers to help with these centers starting in October!

Math: We read the book, Chrysanthemum and shared the diversity of names in our class – a wonderful example of the Empowered Disciple SLE (Student Learning Expectations)– valuing the diversity of God’s children. We then counted how many letters we each have in our names and created a bar graph to organize our class data. We discussed the greatest and the least number of letters.

We also read the book, Ten Apples Up On Top and put 10 apples up on top our own heads! Students wrote their numbers 1-10 on apples, colored their apples, cut and glued them on top of a self drawn portrait! We are practicing properly writing our numbers 1-10!

Second Step: This week we began our unit on Growth Mindset and Goal Setting through our Second Step program. We learned that in order to pay attention, you watch with your eyes, listen with your ears, and think with your brain! Ask your child to show you how they can pay attention, for example, when you are reading a story with them or explaining how to do something.

Religion: We are showing we are Christ-centered people. We will begin to practice praying with intention and reverence to God and saying the Our Father as a class starting next week. As well, at the end of the day we will practice praying to our Guardian Angels to protect us by saying the prayer of the Guardian Angel. We are also learning the prayer before and after meals, which we say to thank God for our lunch and snack. We read the story of Creation from the bible and learned about all the wonderful gifts God has given us. Students made a mobile showing the seven days of Creation!

We also started a mindfulness activity that we will do throughout our school year. It is called “Mind Yeti”! This week, we learned how to take deep breaths, focus on our breathing and calm down our minds. Ask your child how to take deep breaths with their hot bowl of soup!

Common Core Standards we’re working on:

• I can read common sight words.
• I can draw or write to help me share what I think.
• I can print lots of upper and lowercase letters.
• I can write numbers from 0-20.

Important Dates:

• Wednesday, Sept 21^st – Jog-A-Thon!
• Sunday, September 25^th– Blessing of the Backpacks Mass