Current Happenings in 235
Week of October 10th
Upcoming Dates
Monday, the 17th: cycle day 10; PTO meeting at 6:30
Tuesday, the 18th: Library; Read-a-thon; cycle day 1
*There is no school Wednesday, October 19th-Friday October 21st due to MEA.
The Day the Crayons Quit
We welcomed Mrs. Rachael Schweigert into our classroom this week. Mrs. Schweigert is the Young Scholars teacher at Jackson. Her role at the kindergarten level is to bring activities into the classroom that promote problem solving.
This week she reread The Day the Crayons Quit. The kinders did an activity where they had to write a note to a colored crayon about why the crayon should not quit. These came home on Monday.
Owl Babies
For our October scrapbook, we read aloud the book Owl Babies and created the characters Sarah, Percy + Bill through paint. These are hung in the hallway and will be coming home at the end of the year.
Scholastic Orders Due Tuesday
I will be placing October Scholastic Book Orders on Tuesday, October 18th after school so any Halloween books will be in by the 31st.
Jackson Read-A-Thon
The Jackson Read-A-Thon is a fundraiser put on by the PTO. The goal is for each student to participate in the event. Please sign your child up (https://secure.eventsonline.us/reg/getmovincrew/pub/classroom/13393) + if any questions arise, reach out to a PTO representative. THANK YOU!
MN Apple Crunch Day
On Thursday the state of Minnesota was promoting healthy eating. Here at Jackson, our students and staff participated by eating healthy fall apples!
Dairy Queen Bonus!
Our class won one of the prizes from the PTO for raising the most money in one night! As a reward, the PTO gave each child in our room a certificate to get a free cone at Dairy Queen. This came home in Tuesday's folder.
Ned: There's a Champion in Every Kid!
On Thursday morning we welcomed some guests to our school to speak to us about character building. Ned stands for: Never give up; Encourage others; + Do your best. Follow this link for more information: http://www.thenedshow.com/
What we learned
Take a look into our class
Reading:
- Throughout this week the kindergarteners read the non-fiction text Exploring Fall and answered the following questions: What happens to trees in fall? What happens to people in fall? What happens to animals in fall? See if your kinder can act out the sentences for you with our answers!
- The goal of creating a matrix is being able to find the most important information in the text.
Writing:
- Words we worked on spelling correctly: /go/, /on/ + /went/.
- Points we worked on whole group: making sure the beginning of a sentence always has an uppercase letter + slowly stretching/saying words in a sentence to hear multiple sounds.
Handwriting:
- Introduced letters the "school way": /r/, /n/, /m/, /i/ + /j/.
- We are almost finished with our lowercase book. What this means is that the muscle memory has been taught, along with the stroke names for each letter, so during independent time, I will be placing more emphasis on asking students to correctly write them on their papers if they are formed incorrectly. Please try to help out at home as well!
Poem/Phonics:
- This week we read "Hickory Dickory Dock"; introduced words: /up/+ /did/. The punctuation mark we focused on this week was the exclamation mark (!) + I showed them what a semi-colon (;) is and what it can be used for in writing. The semi-colon introduction was a discussion and is in no way something I'd like them to be able to identify at this time or what it is used for--just a learning point!
- We focused each day on identifying rhyming words + identifying the beginning sound in words.
Math:
- We continue to work on patterns and identifying the names of those patterns (AB, AAB, ABB, etc.). Kinders also created a pattern book using Book Creator. These were loaded on to Seesaw.
Theme:
- We did an art project surrounding the book Owl Babies. These are hanging in our hallway.
- Students also will get to see the fire truck and meet some of the Shakopee fire fighters on Friday morning to wrap up our fire unit.
Kaitlin Wermerskirchen
Email: kwermers@shakopee.k12.mn.us
Phone: 952.496.5802
Twitter: @Kindersin235