Jan. 23 - 27

Wow!  This week flew by!  This MONTH flew by ! 

Our letter for the week was "i" and our sight words were "what" and "will."  We read many stories about winter such as Snow, Stranger in the Woods, Snow Family, and Snow on Snow.  We read Snowballs and made cooperative snow creatures.  The books Tacky the Penguin and The Important Book  were the inspiration for some writing about how we are special and important and for the fun penguins we created for our hallway!  Artwork and writing will be displayed Open House Night!

This week was CBM testing.  Each student was pulled for a series of timed tests on sound recognition, blending nonsense words, reading, and number quantity discrimination.  In class we wrote a response to a writing prompt.  We have been practicing "Turn That Question Around" or TTQA which is recycling some of the words in the question to make a complete sentence answer.  The students are really doing a great job with this concept!

We continue to practice addition using dice, creating story problems, and recording our thinking using the addition symbol and equals sign.  We will be practicing subtraction next week!  Sequencing and order of events in a day were a focus this week too.

We are continuing our conversations about empathy, bullying, supporting friends, and noticing positive friendly behavior of others!  I am seeing a growth in our classroom!

We ended our week with a fun get together with our fifth grade buddies from Mrs. Bennick's class.  Today we had Game Day.  We split our classes between the two rooms to enjoy time playing board games and working puzzles!  It was a blast!

Thank you to Mrs. Marron, Mrs. McHale, Mrs. Ranjan, and Mrs. Hallissey for leading the Literacy Groups this week!

I hope to see EVERYONE on Tuesday, January 31st for Open House!

Have a great weekend!

Jan. 17-20

Let it snow!  Let it snow!  Let it snow!

As I write this on this Friday winter morning we are anticipating 5-8 inches!  I hope everyone is safe today travelling to and from school and work!

We had a fun week in kindergarten.  Letter G was our letter of the week and we read great stories that allowed us to retell, visualize and predict...lots of higher level comprehension strategies!  We began morning math boxes again which focus on counting on to add, addition and subtraction, coin recognition and number recognition.  Addition was practiced this week as we used fun manipulatives and work spaces to create addition number stories.  During the math wall we searched a page full of tens frames to find those that showed the number five.  We realized that five (and all the other numbers) can be displayed in many different ways.  We continue to practice math extended responses by looking for the number and label in the question, drawing our problem to show our thinking and writing the answer in a complete sentence.  The kids are doing a great job with this!  Our Cool Tool for this week continues to be empathy.  We also talked about what to do and say when someone tells you "no" and how to respectfully say "no" to someone else.  Winter stories, projects, and writing complete the activities that we did this week and will continue through January. 

The following information is about Open House:

Dear Parents and Students:

You and your family are cordially invited to attend May Watts School’s Open House on Tuesday, January 31, 2012.   We are holding only one Open House this year.  To alleviate being overcrowded, we are asking families whose last name begins with “A thru L” attend from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.  Families whose last name begins with “M thru Z” are requested to attend from 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.  

This is an excellent opportunity for you and your family to see your children's work, meet your child's teacher and see your school.  All members of our support staff will also be available for you to visit.  Please be sure to stop by and visit with them. Due to the informal nature of the night, it will not be possible to conduct parent/teacher conferences.  Our next conference date is Tuesday, February 21^st,  or you can call the teacher anytime to schedule a meeting. 

There will not be a Book Fair during Open House this year.  We will be holding the Book Fair in March and more information will be forthcoming.

Please remember to check our "Lost & Found" which will be on display in the Office hallway during the evening.  Any items not claimed this evening will be donated to a charity.

We will open all outside building doors in order for you to enter the building so that you may park in the rear of the building.   Come on in.  We are looking forward to your visit.

Sincerely,

May Watts Staff

ATTENTION:

Report cards went home in your child's backpack today.  Please review and keep contents at home.  Sign the 2nd quarter line on the envelope and return the envelope only.

Our One Hundred Day Celebration will be Monday, February 6th.  There will be fun centers focusing on the number 100.  I need 4-5 parent volunteers from 9:30-10:40.  Please let me know if you are interested!  Thank you!!!!!

Have a wonderful winter weekend!

Jan. 9-12

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a wonderful winter break!  The two weeks off were filled with family, fun, and rest!  I was geared up to start the new year with my kindergarten friends!  We are off to a great start!  The children seem to return from break more mature and ready to take on the challenge of becoming prepared for first grade. The kids were excited to see the new arrangement of our classroom.  Each table is working hard to earn the most tallies so they can have beanie baby friends keep them company on their desks on Fridays! 

January brings BIG changes in Kindergarten.  During the first few weeks back we will spend a good amount of time assessing the children as we prepare for report cards and begin to change up our flex groups. Each child will be assessed for their 2nd quarter math skills as well as on our Kindergarten sight words. Students will also take our winter CBM tests. In order to do these assessments, the children may be doing more seat work or independent reading/writing for a few days. But once we get our new scores, it will be full speed ahead! When we pull all this information together, we will look at what your child's needs are. We will place them in a flex group that works on the skills they need to build upon or that provides them with enrichment. We will also begin to differentiate within the classroom more during centers and writers workshop. We strive to provide the very best education for each and every one of our May Watts kids.

This week we focused on the letter F and sight words "yes" and "play."  We read non-fiction books and articles about frogs and wrote wonderful fact pages about what we learned and discussed.  We began making books in writer's workshop.  Everyone was so excited!  We will share our books every once and a while in class.  The kids will get great ideas from each other!  After sharing the writer's workshop items will come home for you to celebrate your child's writing.

This week and next week we will talk about empathy.  Understanding how others feel helps us make better choices.  Empathy is a tricky concept for kindergartners, but if they think about how THEY would feel if a situation happened to them, it helps put things into perspective. 

Literacy Centers began this week.  A big thanks to Eden, Elsie, and Molly's mom and Kevin's dad for leading the small groups.  Each group will spend half the time playing a language arts skill game and the other half practicing a math concept.  Everyone had a fun time.  Please consider signing up.  It's easy to lead a group and the kids love having you in the classroom!

We practiced probability, counting by 10's, and counting backward this week.  We will continue the math wall next week reinforcing number sense concepts.

I sent home the Scholastic book order forms for January but feel free to order online for any month available.  Please have the orders in by January 27th.

Please open the attachment to my latest Blog update email.  It has the details for this year's Open House which is Tuesday January 31st.

Please make sure boots and snow pants are labeled and PLEASE have your child practice dressing independently!  What a big help that will be.  Thank you!

Have a great weekend!  Enjoy the snow!