Today we learned about direct and indirect pathways!
We were honored to have 3 very special guests come to our room to teach us all about their careers! Thank you so much for sharing with us1 Amy Krouse Rosenthal is the author of many popular children's books, and we have really enjoyed reading them in our author study. We were thrilled to hear that Amy Krouse Rosenthal would be paying a visit to Burley School, and we were so excited to hear that she would host a special question & answer session for Pre-K and Kindergarten! We brainstormed some questions to ask, and enjoyed hearing her answers! She even read a lout Little Pea for us! 001 Author ShareAfter we listened to our mentor author, we headed back to 001 to listen to very own authors share their own books! Through the support and generosity of our parents, 4 brand new iPad2 minis complete with durable cases were funded for our class through DonorsChoose.org. They are an incredible gift, and will continue to enhance the curriculum for our Kindergartners, and further classes to come!
Since the day we received our shipment, we synced our iPads and got them up and running! The boys and girls love the iPads, and have been using them to research, record their thinking, and publish their books. We are so grateful that we have been giving such an amazing opportunity to explore the world of dance. Hubbard Street Dance Chicago began their residency in our school today, and we had a blast! We added a lot of new tools to our dancing toolkit, and we are looking forward to our next class!
Boys and girls in 001 gave a wonderful performance at Holiday Hoopla! I am so proud of them for all of the hard work they have put into practicing the song and the dance!
We were thrilled to hear that 001 had the highest percentage of families that participated in the annual fund, and won a terrific "Frozen" performance dedicated to our class, along with Olaf hats for every boy and girl! We are so grateful for all that our families do for us. Thank you for taking the time to come and visit this week! It was great to get to sit down and talk about our year so far. Our first quarter was incredible, and I’m very excited to begin our second quarter!
During our short week, we introduced one new letter and two new sight words. In math, we are working on comparing values using terms like “greater/more than,” “equal to,” and “less/fewer than.” This is a skill that can be easily practiced at home. Compare and contrast any number of objects, and ask your child to tell you if one amount is fewer than, greater than, or equal to another amount! Practicing at home will help us to become more comfortable using these new terms! Today marked our 50th day in school! We are halfway to the 100th day! Letter: Z Sight Words: if, mom Word family: -ug We have been really busy in 001!
We have been focusing on identifying the beginning, middle and end of different stories, and retelling them without leaving out the important parts. This is a difficult comprehension skill to master, because often it is hard to decipher what are the most important ideas in the beginning, middle and end. When reading at home, have your child tell you what happened at the beginning of the story, what happened in the middle, and what happened at the end. Remember, we are trying to focus in on the most telling parts! Enjoy the 3 day weekend. Don’t forget to schedule a conference time on Wednesday if you have not already done so. Letters: W, X Sight Words: to, he Word Family: -ug Today was an amazing day!
We started off our day with a visit from a secret reader, which always brings big smiles all around! It's such a great treat to be able to have our families visit our room! We had a lot of work to get done before our very first field trip! We went on our first bus journey together to the Ruth Page theatre to see Leo Lionni's Frederick, and it did not disappoint! What an amazing performance! The actors and actresses even commented on what a wonderful audience we were! Special thanks to our chaperones who helped make our trip a complete success! When we returned back to school, we joined together with our third grade buddies to create something beautiful together. The children worked on designing and decorating placemats for retirees in a home to bring them Halloween cheer and kind messages. The turned out absolutely beautiful, and the messages were very touching. In spite of the poor weather conditions, I hope all will have a great weekend filled with family fun and happy memories! Letters: U, V Sight Words: and, love Word family: -ug We're really enjoying our new author study on Leo Lionni, and are counting down the days until our field trip to see Frederick!
We are continuing to build our word wall with two new sight words every week. However, it's important that we continue to review the words we learned in previous weeks so that your child can read them in a "snap," as oppose to sounding them out. Practicing with sight words at home makes a big difference and is very important for purposes of developing their essential skills as a reader. We are continuing to work on identifying quantities without actually counting! We are giving particular focus on quantities from 1-6, but practicing with higher quantities doesn't hurt either! Look out for smaller numbers of certain items and ask your child to tell you how many items they see without counting them. Our group really enjoy these activities in our math centers and love to shock people with their amazing subitizing skills! Letters: K, L Sight Words: can, in Word Family: -ug |
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