October Is In Full Swing!

You may have noticed that I was out of the building two days this week.  I was attending a training led by Harvard professor Lee Teitel.  We got some great information that we will use at our school.

I just wanted to remind you that Thursday will be an Early Release Day (1:00).  If your child has a change in plans, please let me know in writing.

Progress Reports will go out again on Friday.

We have been working on creating powerful partnerships in Readers Workshop.  This week we started to talk about why they are so important.  We can get help from our partners and give help back.  We can share new books and find out about new books.  We can help each other with words or understanding a story.

We continue to work on numbers in math.  It is important for us to be able to count 10 objects with one to one matching, count to ten forwards and backwards, recognize groups of objects, add one or take one away,  and know why we use numbers.  We are developing strategies to make us efficient and accurate counters as well.  We learned how to count on from a number rather than to start counting at one.

We have been working on forming letters correctly.  To help at home, there are fun things you can do to make your child's fine motor muscles stronger.  For example, they can play with play-doh and clay, pop packing bubbles, paint, crumple paper (great for a 3 dimensional craft project), tear paper, cut coupons, use clothespins or tweezers, or create leaf rubbings.  You can google kindergarten fine motor activities to find even more.

The popcorn words (words that pop up in our reading and writing) we have learned are: I, a, is, the, my, see, can, like.

Here are some of the books we have read this week:

What Can You Share?

In Reader's Workshop this week, we talked about what we can share with our reading buddies.  This was our anchor chart:

You can encourage your child to share with you too!  We have been talking about how we say more than just, "That's cool!" by telling your buddy why you think it is so cool.  I also shared some of my "teacher books" with highlights, post its and writing to show all the things I didn't know or thought was cool.  It is important for beginning readers to see others using these strategies.

I realized that I hadn't shared one of my favorite books for parents.  I read it for a class a few years ago, and I loved it.  Half the book is different ideas about how to read to your child, and the other half is read aloud suggestions.  The read alouds are organized by categories.  The Derry Public Library has at least one copy.  I would also be willing to lend my copy out for anyone interested.

In math, we continue to work on counting strategies.  We worked on the idea of counting on.  If we have 6 counters in the cup and want to add 3 more, we can remember that there are 6 in the cup and start counting there.  It is so much faster!  

We had our first visit from Mrs. Herr this week too.  She is our guidance counselor and will visit once a month.  This month, she talked about how to be a good friend.  She gave the students "toolboxes" that they will use to collect the tools that Mrs. Herr talks to them about.  This visit, they got a friendship badge.

Here are some of the books we read this week:

Important Dates

October 13-No School

October 23-Early Release, 1:00 Dismissal

October 24-Progress Reports