Snakes and Ladders

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Final week in May!

WOW, time is flying by!  I can't believe it is already the last week in May.

Last week in Reading Workshop we learned to film ourselves while reading using the iPad.  It was extremely successful.  This is a strategy we will use to become more fluent readers going forward.  It is easy to do and they will be able to do it on any iPad, iPod, iPhone, or computer using the camera app and Video recording. My readers were really excited to do this! (I have a picture that I'll post tomorrow.) This project did take me away from book groups for the week, but we will be back on this week with new books coming home in reading bags!  We did have time for good rhyming and word family practice.

Writing Update: I hope you enjoyed our Opinion Speeches movie!  We are completing our Opinion unit and doing nice Journal writing this week.  It is really nice to see their growth this year in their journals.  We will continue to write about true things that have happened to us.  It can be as easy as writing about breakfast, our family, our pets, and things we like to do. This is good practice for writing that you should continue this summer.  We are focusing on capital letters, spacing between words, and periods.

Math: Last week we began studying spatial relationships (in front of, behind, next to, etc.).  This week is going to be tricky with Right vs. Left.  Please ask your mathematician questions involving right and left all week.  Practice makes perfect!

Science: This week we will be learning about Rainforest Animals that live in the Understory of the Rainforest and on the Rainforest Floor.

Tomorrow we have a Memorial Day Assembly... please wear red, white, and blue.  I'll bring blankets for us to sit on since it is an outdoor event. I hope you had a great long weekend!

Speeches

The week ahead

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I am typing this blog as I wait to return home from a great three day weekend in Chicago with my best friends from elementary school.  It is so funny to me that I have known them since I was the age of the students in my class!  Although I missed my friends on Friday, it was great to get away.  I'll be back tomorrow and ready to get back into the swing of things.  I hope everyone had nice baseball, softball, and soccer games and I hope the Girl Scouts survived their overnight camping trip!

This week we will be finishing our water study with BUBBLES!  I am hoping for nice weather or we will be making bubbles in the classroom. We will also be finishing up our final animals of our ocean study.

Writing: On Friday I recorded your writer making their speech!  They were so cute.  I will be combining them all and posting the movie for you to enjoy.  We will spend this week writing in journals and working on the basics that seem to be slipping away such as spacing and letter formation.

Reading: This week we will focus on fluency. I am going to teach my readers how to record themselves on the ipad so that they can listen to themselves read.  It is important this week (as it is for all weeks) to read their book group book each night.  It will help to make them more fluent readers.

Math: We will continue our study of shapes this week.  We will spend more time on 3D shapes.

Family timelines are due this week.. do your best to get them on the paper we sent home (otherwise, they just take up too much space in the hallway).  If a few pictures hang off the edges, it is ok!

I look forward to a great week!

Happy Mother's Day!

I hope our gifts made it home safely!  Happy Mother's Day to all of the Mom's!

We had a great week last week with water play, oceans, shapes, and more. 

It was so much fun to see our seeds grow and plant them in the garden.  Thank you to the PTO for including us in this huge undertaking.  We will continue to see our herbs grow and help to water the garden.

This week we will continue our hard work as we complete water play, publish our opinion (persuasive) writing, complete our study of oceans, complete our study of geometry, and start something new and cool with the iPads and our reading!  

The word family is - og this week! Get ready for frog, log, blog, dog words to be used in your house a lot this week. Pop words: please, they, good.

If you have an iPad at home, get ready for our new way to check how fluently we are reading.... more information to come.  You will be able to do this at home with iPads, computers, and tablets!

I hope you got outside on Saturday and enjoyed the nice weather.  Today's weather has been nuts. I heard my friends were great in class on Friday with Ms. Mihalk.  I can't wait to see them tomorrow.

Websites From Today

Almost all of my friends can independently log into the computers!!!  It is a great skill to have going forward in elementary school.

Today we each did 1 round of Xtra Math and then worked on Learn To Read on Starfall.com.
xtramath.com
Starfall.com
Math Practice

Another great site for learning about oceans is: http://wonderopolis.org/?s=oceans

Oceans

We had a great week learning about Oceans... although I need to do a little research on Jellyfish and how they eat.  My Marine Biologists had some great questions! This week we will continue to learn about the ocean and it will be incorporated into our reading and math lessons as well.


Pop Words: We will have three new pop words this week - say, what, there.  Please continue to practice these words at home. If your readers is great at reading these words and you are looking for a way to bump them up, have your student practice spelling them.

Writing: I am LOVING the opinion letters that your writers are creating. There are letters to parents about wanting to stay up late, letters to Mrs. Reagan to sit where they want at lunch, and we all wrote a letter to our favorite ice cream store complimenting them (I mailed them on Thursday).  We will continue this unit for one more week. 

Reading: New book group books will be coming home tomorrow for your pleasure. We are really becoming quite wonderful readers in Kindergarten!  I am very impressed. Starting this week, we will be working on real words vs. nonsense words.  Readers need to learn to use the letters and their sounds alone to arrive at word pronunciations.  You can practice this at home too... I'll send home some information on Tuesday. 



Math: We are now very good at sorting.  We can sort shapes by color, size, shape, and texture. These attributes will continue as we begin to talk about shapes this week. 

I enjoyed having 2 parents in class as volunteers on Friday so I have decided to add an additional volunteer on Friday's.  If you are interested, please sign up on Volunteer Spot on the right hand side. 

This week I will be screening incoming kindergarten students on Wednesday so there will be a substitute in the class.  I will be in the halls and around the building so I will check on my friends.

I hope you are enjoying the wonderful weather outside!