Kindergarten
November 17th
Reading
This week, we read Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano. Not only did we reinforce making predictions and retelling a story; we also developed students understanding of nonfiction books. We learned facts about turkeys which allowed us to make charts and mini books with our new information.
When learning about turkeys and reading Turkey Trouble, we better understood why we disguised our turkeys. The students were so proud of their disguised turkeys, and we were very impressed with the creative ideas and detailed work!
Math
We dove deeper into shapes by creating our own shapes. We worked as a group to count the vertices and edges of the 3D shapes in order to create our own 3D shapes. Also, we enjoyed using 2D shapes to create pictures. In stations, we made other shapes and turkeys. We also read the book, The Shape of Things. In this story, they gave different examples of how a shape is just a shape until you add something to make it an object we encounter every day. Each student was given a shape to start with and add to in order to create a picture. We created a class book with our wonderful ideas!
Writing, Sight Words, Phonics
We have worked to improve our journal writing through adding sight words and developing the ability to use our phonics skills to write the beginning sounds of words. We will continue to develop these phonics skills with the incorporation of rhyming and word families. We will also continue to meet each student at their individual phonics level through guided groups during our phonics stations.
Social Studies
Our new unit in social studies is Community. This week, we have discussed neighborhoods, and the kinds of homes people live in as well as rural, suburban, and city areas. We learned more about the people in our neighborhoods and illustrated our families. Then, we worked to understand how a neighborhood is not just our homes, but also the places in which we work and play. We identified these different places and created a little community of our own. We look forward to you seeing it at conferences!
Conferences/Report Cards
Report Cards were sent home Thursday, November 16th! Each area on the report card states a skill/standard that the students are expected to achieve by the end of kindergarten. We give an indicator or grade that shows your child's current level of ability when progressing toward the standard. For many of the standards, we do not expect students to receive MTG (meeting) until the end of kindergarten. If students demonstrate that they have met the standard prior to the end of the year they will begin working toward a higher level standard. (Sometimes a 1st grade standard.) In the first trimester, many students will receive a DEV (developing) or BEG (beginning) score because we will continue to work to meet the standard throughout the school year. I will be able to share more information at Parent-Teacher Conferences on November 20th and 21st! I look forward to seeing you then!