January 22, 2016

Dear Families,

          This week we learned about community helpers.  We connected community helpers, who help our communities, to Martin Luther King Jr., who helped our world to be a better place.  The children had a tremendous amount of background knowledge about community helpers; several children know community helpers or even have them in their family!  We read non-fiction books about firefighters, police officers, and mail carriers.  We also watched a short video about community helpers, goods, and services.  The children labeled pictures of police officers or firefighters and added captions to their pictures. 

During our non-fiction read alouds, we focused on the concept that non-fiction books teach us information.  Before reading, we thought about what we already knew; while we read we repeatedly thought to ourselves “I knew that,” “I didn’t know that,” or “I thought I knew something, and now I have to change my thinking.”  We recorded new learning as a class, and we celebrated our thinking. 

On Friday we headed up to the computer lab to have a turn with Raz-Kids.  The children practiced reading just-right non-fiction books online and enjoyed earning points towards the “star zone.”  Please consider visiting https://www.kidsa-z.com/main/Login to help your child access Raz-Kids at home.  When you visit the site, you can find our class by entering mkeeneam or mkeenepm in the teacher username bar.  Your child’s password is his/her initials.  Raz-Kids is a terrific tool for helping children to make progress in reading, and the children are welcome to record the Raz-Kids texts in their reading logs. 

This week the children worked with pattern blocks in partners.  They used shapes to build hexagons in six different ways.  The goals were for the children to learn that they can use small shapes to build a bigger shape, and that they can break a bigger shape down into smaller shapes.  Children were interested that they could use trapezoids, blue rhombuses, and triangles to build the hexagon, but that they could not use the tan rhombuses or squares. 

Next week we will have workboard and guided reading.  We will focus many activities around Ezra Jack Keats, The Snowy Day.  Enjoy the new snow this weekend!

Take care,

Meg Keene and Andrea McCarthy

Books We Read:

·       A Very Busy Firehouse, by Alyse Sweeney

·       Police Officers on the Go!, by Alyse Sweeney

·       We Need Mail Carriers

Lively Letters:

·       Tracking / Tapping and Sliding Sounds – words with “King E”

Handwriting Without Tears

·       New Letters: G, Q

Sight Words:

·       Review: go, so, no, we, he, see, the, am, an, can, and, like, my, a, I

January 15, 2016

Dear Families,

          We had a good week in room 113!  We have been busy with lots of math learning.  The children enjoyed playing “Quick Looks” with tens-frames.  To play this game, each child used a tens frame and counters to build images that they saw for less than three seconds.  After each round, children talked about what groupings they saw to help them know how to build the number.  For example, when the children saw this tens-frames image, some children saw two groups of four, others saw two squares, and others saw a filled in tens frame with two spaces in the middle.  This kind of activity and discussion helps the children develop their understanding of how numbers can be composed and decomposed (build or taken apart), which develops a strong foundation for number combinations.  In math this week, children also made number lines from 0 to 9 with tens frames, practiced graphing as a whole class and individually, and used calculators to type large numbers with the numerals 0-9. 

This week, we used Jan Brett’s The Mitten as a launching pad for our literacy centers.  In this story, winter animals huddle together in one lost, squishy mitten until a little mouse makes a bear sneeze, and all of the animals go flying.  In Reading Response, the children wrote about what animals they would like to share the mitten with.  We challenged the children to expand on their thinking by including a “because” phrase.  We have been working on this orally and in writing.  At art center, the children made symmetrical puffy paint mittens.  Our poem this week was about colorful mittens.

          This week we also learned about Martin Luther King, Jr.  We read a non-fiction book and a Scholastic News, each focusing on Dr. King’s beliefs that all people should have access to equal rights no matter what they look like.  From there, the children thought about ways that they could make the world a better place.  We listened to the song “With My Own Two Hands,” and the children stamped hearts with their own two hands.  All of the children wrote about ways that they can make the world a better place.  My hope is that the kindergarteners took away the lesson that Dr. King made the world a better place by helping to make it more fair, and that the kindergarteners can make the world a better place too. 

          Next week is a short week.  Everyone will be home on Monday for MLK Day.  On Tuesday, children will be home while teachers have a full day of professional development.  We’ll look forward to seeing the children on Wednesday.  Next week, as we study community helpers, we will continue to learn about people who make the world a better place. 

          Best wishes,

          Meg Keene and Andrea McCarthy

Books We Read:

·       The Mitten, by Jan Brett

·       The Hat, by Jan Brett

·       The Jacket I Wear in the Snow, by Shirley Neitzel

·       Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, by Rebecca Rissman

Lively Letters:

·       Tracking / Tapping and Sliding Sounds – words with “King E”

Handwriting Without Tears

·       Introducing Curved Letters: C and O

Sight Words:

·       New: go, so, no

·       Review: we, he, see, the, am, an, can, and, like, my, a, I