Kee-Notes
January 25, 2016
Report Cards
- Report cards will be sent home tomorrow
- Overall, I am very proud of my "sweet babies"! They have been working hard!
- Please make sure you sign and return the WHITE envelope. If your child does not have a white envelope... that means it was not sent back the 1st quarter.
- The report card is yours to keep
- I created a checklist over the "snowcation" to hopefully help clarify the SPECIFIC area(s) your child needs to work on.
- EVERY child in my class needs to work on the writing and retelling components...some more than others.
- Non-fiction text gave the students a hard time. Unfortunately the majority of the books that I have to send home for nightly reading is fiction : / I'm trying to look and search out some free text or online leveled text that is non-fiction. I haven't had much luck, but I will keep searching. With that being said, any time you have an opportunity to read a NF book to your child or they have a chance to read one to you PLEASE do.
Spellabration
- Due to the MANY, various school-wide assessments going on plus our recent "blizzard", Spellabration has been bumped up to next week.
- Spellabration is a WONDERFUL (easy) fundraiser for our school. There is no selling involved.
- Please consider sponsoring your child (and our school)
- You may sponsor a certain amount per word they get correct (ex- $0.25 per answer correct) OR you may choose to just donate a set amount -whether they get everything correct or none correct (ex- $25.00 donation).
- Please also consider asking family and friends to help sponsor your child.
- THE AREAS EACH CHILD NEEDS TO KNOW AND WORK ON: RECITE FULL ADDRESS (street #, street, city, state), PHONE NUMBER, AND SPELLING THEIR LAST NAME.
Assessment Data
- Assessment data from our 2 county-wide assessment tools: Reading 3D and I-Ready will be sent home in the next few weeks.
- Due to the weather, our class is scheduled to take the I-Ready assessment TOMORROW! If you could also speak to your child about doing their best, taking their time, and doing their best. This assessment is quite lengthy and often the children get tired (bored) and their score is not the best indication of their abilities.
ANNUAL SUPERBOWL PARTY
- The Kee ANNUAL Superbowl party is scheduled for NEXT Friday!
- GO PANTHERS
- Our curriculum for the day will all be centered around football and the Superbowl.
- GO PANTHERS!
- We will have lunch in the room. We will have pizza, chips, and other "tailgating" food. The cost will be $5 per child.
- GO PANTHERS!I have attached (to this newsletter) a form where you can fill out online your child's pizza choice.
- GO PANTHERS!
- If anyone would like to help decorate the room Thursday afternoon or if anyone has any special "tailgating" food they would like to share with our class let me know.
- GO PANTHERS!
- Your child may dress up like a football player, a cheerleader, or just wear their favorite teams colors (EXCEPT NO BRONCOS ALLOWED...twins ;) )
- GO PANTHERS!
- Your child may bring their favorite football accessories (helmet, pom-poms, etc)
- GO PANTHERS!
Parent - Teacher Conferences
- Mid year conferences are only required for any / all student that is below grade level at this time. I will not be meeting with each family this quarter.
- I have to meet with the parents of any children that are well below grade level and fall on the county's scale of possible retentions.
- Letters will be sent home next week to those parents
- With that being said if your child is not on my list of mandatory conferences but you haveconcerns or questions and would like to meet with me, let me know. I am more than willing to set up a conference with you, but I must meet with the mandatory conferences first.
100 th Day of School
- FEBRUARY 9th is the 100th day of school! (wohooooo!)
- This day will be a fun-packed learning day!
- TO CELEBRATE THIS DAY WE ARE GOING TO DRESS UP LIKE WE ARE 100 YEARS OLD!!
- This is such a fun activity... at least I truly love it! ;)
- Let your imagination go wild.
- Google images of an "old" person.
- Check out pinterest (they often have fun suggestions).
- Some ideas... gray hair, "old men" hats, rollers in hair, bedroom slippers, bathrobes, "glasses" (with the lenses out), canes, "old lady" jewelry, floral dresses, shawls, etc.
- **I'm giving you plenty of time to brainstorm... so let's try to have everyone do it! We will take a walk to the office to show off our OLD SELVES! :)
Valentines Day Activities
- We will "celebrate" Valentines Day on Feb. 12th
- I will send home a list of all of the children in our class for your child's valentines.
- Your child is to make a Valentine box out of a cereal box. They may wrap it with construction paper, wrapping paper, decorate any way they choose, but they ALL must have one. It needs a handle so the children can carry it. Leave the top cut out so the children can deliver their valentines easily.
- More info of items needed will be sent out soon
SICKNESS...SPECIAL REQUEST !
Cabarrus County school policy states that your child is not to be at school unless they are 24 hours(OR LONGER) fever, diarrhea, sickness free!
Many of you already know, but I wanted to let everyone know that may not... we have a special student in our class that has Cystic Fibrosis (Sophia) and I am sending out a very special request... PLEASE KEEP HER IN MIND WHEN YOU ARE MAKING THAT CRUCIAL DECISION OF WHETHER TO SEND YOUR CHILD OR NOT. Anything your child gets or has she gets 5x worse and as you all know in kindergarten they share EVERYTHING...tables, computers, books, spots, etc. !
Sophia is in the hospital now (and has been all week). They are hoping she will get to come home this weekend, but she will not be able to return for at least another week or so. Please keep our sweet Sophia in your thoughts and prayers!
As you all know, I teach the children that In our classroom we are all a family, so as part of the "Kee" family we really need take all the precautions that we can to take care of all the children... and Sophia needs our extra help.
PLEASE, PLEASE keep your child at home if they are sick for EVERYONE's sake.
SNAP words!
Sight word (aka- snap word) knowledge is very important in your child's reading and comprehension. If they are having to sound out every word they come to then they are loosing the meaning and fluency of the text, which in turn is detrimental to their comprehension.
Please continue to study and send in your snap word list. Ms. Singh and I try to pull them to test as much as possible during our day.
Remember there are 12 lists... your child should be on at least 3 ready to move to 4.
For those couple of students that have mastered all 12 lists and are now working on the spelling of them... get busy ;p !
Reading
We are working on:
Pattern books
- different types of pattern books
- how pattern books help us with retelling (comprehension)
- how pattern books help us sound like readers (fluency)
- contrasting and comparing pattern books
Decoding Strategies
- Reading through the word ... not stopping at the first letter
Retelling
Writing
SMALL MOMENTS
A small moment is taking out one event from our collection of events in our day, vacation, etc. and zooming in on that event. Making sure to add details
We are using our past "Snowcation" as our topic for our Small Moment writing study.
Parts of a small moment book- introduction, three individual details (pages) about the event, and closure (wrapping it up)
Math
- We are finishing up our addition and subtraction unit (whew!) This unit is always a challenging unit. The students seemed to, overall, grasp the concepts. Of course, subtraction is always the harder concept...having to make sure you put your starting number (the larger number) first always gives them a hard time, especially after learning addition and the "order" didn't matter.
- Our next unit is shapes...2D and 3D. This is a HARD unit. By the end you child will be responsible for knowing the following things:
- circle, square, rectangle, triangle, oval, trapezoid, rhombus, pentagon, hexagon, octagon, cube, cone, pyramid, cylinder, rectangular prism, vertices, edges, points, number of lines
Snack / Specials
- A new snack/ special schedule is coming home Friday.
- If you notice a (*) beside your name then that means we already have your snack...due to the crazy weather and schedules.
- Please make sure to send in snack on your day.
- On a side note... the health inspector said we are NOT allowed to have "storage" of snack so if your child has snack coming up please try not to send more than a few days before "their" day.
- Also, parents of children in our "peanut gang", I was told that they ARE allowed to have their own food basket but they can NOT allowed to have more than 7 days of snack in their baskets.