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Sunday, April 15, 2018

Classroom News



These kindergarten friends are rejuvenated after Spring Break and were feeling silly on Crazy Hair Day! I loved seeing all of their creative hairstyles!

When we returned from break, we began our next Reading Workshop unit, which focuses on poetry! We learned that when we read poetry, we think about the title and what we see in the illustrations to make predictions. As we read, we make connections and also spot interesting features that poems sometimes have. We think about how the poem looks and how it sounds, as well as how it makes us feel.


In some of the poems we've read so far, we've discovered that poems sometimes have lines that go in directions other than what we typically see to illustrate a concept:


repeat words to sound like a song:


follow a pattern with rhyming words at the end of lines:


or use sound words to help us imagine what we would hear in such a setting:



During math, we continue to work with numbers from 1-100, specifically focusing on place value. We have introduced the tens and ones place with connecting cubes, and are learning how we can use the tens groups to count the total more quickly.




We have also discovered that knowing the tens and ones place can help us to write two digit numbers, by writing the number of tens towers in the tens place, and the number of individual cubes in the ones place.


Another concept we've been practicing is transitioning between each group of tens. For instance, from 58, 59, to 60, 61, and so on.


In LMC, we learned more about the season of spring, then returned to our classroom to review all four seasons and choose our favorites. 



Once we each decided on a favorite season, we wrote about that season. We also had to include reasons to explain why that season is our favorite. We have been working hard on making sure our sentences are complete, with a capital at the beginning, punctuation at the end, and expressing a complete thought with a "who" and a "what". I've enjoyed reading the reasons behind our favorite seasons- they were all very well thought out and included nice details!




I've been so pleased to see what wonderful progress the students have made as readers. In our Guided Reading groups, we have a chance to work on certain decoding and comprehension strategies, depending on the needs of the group. When I'm meeting with Guided Reading groups, the rest of the class is working independently on a task such as short vowel work with CVC words or place value exercises, followed by the option to read from their book bins or work with our "Dessert Tubs". These students are enjoying using letter beads to build sight words, and in the background, completing a puzzle that matches letter sounds with pictures. We are working hard to build our stamina for independent work and independent or partner reading, which will help us prepare for more independence in first grade. We have come a long way!


**REMINDER**
Our Kindergarten Musical is quickly approaching on May 4th. ALL kindergarten students will attend in the morning, and there will be NO afternoon kindergarten that day. Please let me know if you have any questions!

Thanks for reading! Looking forward to another fabulous week!

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