Week of November 5

First thing we need to do is remind everyone that there is NO SCHOOL on Friday Nov.9 and Mon.Nov12. 

Now... we have a busy week planned for the next 4 days. Plus we are assessing on the Second Quarter Expectations and practicing singing for the Kindergarten Performance. Along with that we also have three resources and a birthday. Happy Birthday Anadelilah!!

MATH

This week we start our new unit on comparing numbers 1-10 with the vocabulary terms: more, less, same, or equal. Students will be able to explain which number or set of objects is more or less and by how many. To help illustrate the concept of one more we will read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and compare the different items. We will continue to practice using our counting strategies (one to one/point and count, draw a line and count, etc.) to count objects.
We will begin assessing for the Second Quarter Expectations this week so make sure you are practicing at home. Please make sure your child is practicing their rote counting at home starting at 1. The expectation this quarter is 50... that is without stopping for a long time, and skipping a number. Many student last quarter stopped at 39 which met the first quarter expectation but 39 is a tricky number for most to get past. 

WRITING

We are on a roll writing simple sentences!! The students are working hard at remembering their uppercase letters at the beginning of the sentence and using their "finger spaces" in between the words. We use our Word Wall to write our sight words correctly and then we chop up unknown words. It's amazing how far they have come in such a short amount of time!!

For those of you wondering what we mean by simple sentences. Here are a few examples: We ride on a bus.   I make dinner with Mommy.   I play outside. The sentences are only a few words and are fairly simple so that the students don't need to much guidance when writing them. 

SAXON/ READING SKILLS

This week Saxon has us focused on letter Ss. We will listen for the beginning sound of s, chop up CVC (consonant vowel consonant) words and you'll even notice in our coding we code a few s blends~ st, sl, sp. It's the best!!

Our sight words this week are because, he, she & at. (scroll down a little more for the slideshow. )

We are also kicking it up a notch by working daily on rhyming, counting syllables with our "fancy hand" and writing our fist & last names!! When rhyming the students react to the rhyming pairs with a jump if the pair rhymes or a thumb down and a tongue out if they do not.  When counting syllables we use our "fancy hand." We gently lay a hand under our chin and we count the amount of taps the chin makes on the hand to tell us how many syllables are in the word. Currently all of the practice is done by saying student and teacher names. haha Try Finocchiaro~ it's a hoot with 4 syllables. 

 

READING

Our story this week is Scaredy Squirrel by Melanie Watt. It's an adorable story that allows the students to see how the character evolves from being scared of EVERYTHING!!! at the beginning of the story, to being okay at the end. 

Our story vocabulary is advantage, disadvantage, risk, regret & glide. We will discuss these words in class, but make sure to review them with your child. It'll help their understanding of the story.  

We will review a few reading concepts with this story: Compare (Scaredy Squirrel at the beginning of the story versus the end), Infer (Why did he play dead for so long? What in the story supports your answer?) and Retell (Explain Scaredy Squirrel's daily schedule at the beginning of the story. The daily schedule at the end of the story. Tell all the events of the story from the beginning- to the middle- through the end.)