Class News
Miss Sweeney's Kindergarten
Making Inferences
To become a better reader, we must develop comprehension skills and strategies. Good readers understand what they are reading. Making Inferences is an important skill where the reader must use text clues and their own background knowledge, or schema, in order to better understand the characters and events. The author does not always tell us everything we need to know. He/she relies on the audience to infer how characters might be feeling or why something happened the way it did.
Math
We have been playing a game called "Cross the Decade" in Math. Often when counting, students have some hesitation nearing the end of the decade trying to remember how to cross over to the next one. For example, a student may count "26, 27, 28, 29........." and then have some pausing before saying "30." This is because the easy part is counting the middle of the decade, which always follows the same pattern from the ones family. Remembering what decade family comes next is the tough part! In this game, students played with two gameboards. The red gameboard had red cards facedown that were always at the end of a decade, or ended in a 9. The blue gameboard had blue cards facedown that were always at the beginning of a decade, or ended in a 0. The students started by turning over a red card. Then, they used the prompting card to say, "The number after _______ is ________." They then had to find the blue card with the number that comes next. We are using this game to practice that counting skill of just crossing from one decade to the next.
Writing
We began a K-8 initiative at Oak Grove this year using Thinking Maps to structure how we synthesize new information. We used the Circle Map to brainstorm writing ideas for our "Winter Fun" project. Inside the smallest center circle was the topic: Winter Fun. In the larger circle, we wrote examples of fun winter activities. On the outside of the circle we came up with describing words about winter as a season (i.e. cold, icy). After we completed this brainstorming process, the students circled three activities from their own map that they wanted to include in their project. They also chose one describing word from the map to include.
The tricky part was turning our 1 word or short phrase ideas from the map into complete sentences for our project. The kindergarteners did an excellent job transforming their ideas into an exciting piece of informative writing.
Valentine's Day
Our party will be at 8:45am on Friday, February 12th. All parents are welcome to celebrate with us! There is a 1:00 dismissal on Friday. Buses will be running as usual as well as the Extended Day program.
If your child wrote valentines for their classmates, please send them to school by Thursday, February 11th. Because of the shortened day on Friday we will be doing our exchanges early.
Class Information
Email: sweeney@ogschool.org
Website: misssweeneyskindergarten.weebly.com
Location: 1700 O'Plaine Rd, Green Oaks, IL, United States
Phone: 847.367.4120 (2504)