Happy Monday! Below is the curriculum and announcements for the week:

Kindergarten-

• New sight words this week! They will be learning the list of 10 words from their homework packet for 4 weeks and will be tested on them at the end of November. The sight word bag words are in addition to the class words. Students are expected to know 100 sight words by the end of Kindergarten, you will be amazed how quickly they learn them!! (Thanks parents for your support at home and to our sight word moms!!)
• We will be working on addition fluency. They did WONDERFUL with sums to 5 and we are now working on sums to 10.
• We will continue with rhyming, syllables, and CVC words.

1st Grade-

• Spelling lists come home today. We are working on the ending -th sound. Please encourage them to find chunks they know in the words so they learn the pattern and can transfer that knowledge to the 5 additional words (we talked about this last week and they did great on Friday’s test).
• Math Unit 2 test will be on Thursday, we are finishing the study guide today. We have been working on a variety of problems that imitate the study guide so they have a complete understanding of the concept.
  • Things to review:  number sentence is just a math problem 🙂
  • Sum: How many all together
  • Using a picture to solve a math problem! If they are not sure whether to add or subtract when completing a story problem, please encourage them to draw a picture to help figure out what the problem is asking them to do.
• Social studies unit test will be this week also.
• We are continuing to work on fluently reading long vowels and blends in our stories.

EVERYONE 

• The Halloween celebration will be on Tuesday,October 31st. Parents are invited to attend the party and celebrate with us. Please DO NOT send your child in their costume. We will change into our costumes at 1:00 pm.
  Parent arrival: 1:00pm
  Party: 1:15pm-2:15pm
  Costume Parade: 2:30pm

  If you plan to attend the party tomorrow and/or the costume parade– please let me know so I have an estimate of how many adults will be present.

• Friday is a 1/2 day for students. 

From the PTA:

There was a mistake on the calendar that was sent home. Kindergarten and Young 5’s do not have school on Friday Nov 17th, not the 10th as it states on the calendar. There IS school on the 10th for Kindergarten but not on the 17th.

1st grade parents:

We will work on the study guide for unit 2 today and it will come home today or Monday, depending on how long it takes us to finish. I use the study guide as a concept review so we will be doing multiple problems for each study guide question… this may take us more than a day 🙂 The unit 2 test will be on Thursday, October 2nd.

The Halloween celebration will be on Tuesday, October 31st. Parents are invited to attend the party and celebrate with us. Please DO NOT send your child in their costume. We will change into our costumes at 1:00 pm.

Party: 1:15-2:15

Costume Parade: 2:30

Happy Monday!

Field trip is on Thursday. If you are a chaperone, please come into school with your child on Thursday morning so I can give you your group and the agenda for the day. Chaperones- please bring a bag or backpack to carry lunches in. All student lunches should come in a disposable bag that can be thrown away.

Kindergarten weekly curriculum

The sight words on the homework packet will be tested on Friday. We have worked with these sight words for 4 weeks. Students will be tested on recognition only. Kindergarten students are doing AMAZING with their reading!

We will continue to work on touch math this week. Kindergarten students are going to participate in Ninja math with the 1st graders (see below).

1st grade weekly curriculum

We are working on the -th sound this week. Spelling lists come home today, the additional 5 words will come from the -th family. We are also working on long A spelling patterns (ai, ay, a_e). Students should be able to recognize the pattern in their books this week.

Increasing fluency in reading:

Sight word mom’s are starting this week! Students will have to read the word 3 times (you will see 3 check marks) before they trade the word out for a new sight word. I have already noticed some students jumping reading levels!! Sight words play a HUGE role in this. Thank you to the parents that are practicing the sight words bags each night in addition to reading.

Ninja Math 

We will begin Ninja Math this week! Students will get a new belt for their ninja each time they complete a level. The students need to answer 20 math problems in 1 minute.

Thank you’s

• Thank you to Ms. Beydoun and Ms. Sayed for getting our Halloween celebration set up and ready! I appreciate all your hard work and help.
• Thank you to Ms. Dasuqi for taking the time to put together our math fact ninjas for us – we cannot wait to begin using them this week 🙂
• Thank you to to all the parents who volunteered to be Sight Word/Math fact parents!! We are so excited to have you in the room each week helping us learn. We are very fortunate to have help at least 3 days a week!!
• Thank you to all parents who already returned their celebration fund money!

Have a great week!

Tomorrow is a late start for students– please be sure to pack them a lunch tomorrow.

Happy Monday!

Homework packets came home today, thank you very much for always ensuring the homework packets are sent back. Last’s week packets and 1st grade spelling tests will be returned home tomorrow.

Kindergarten:

This week we are working heavily on beginning sounds and continuing to stretch out CVC words (constant, vowel, constant) such as: cat, hat, big, dog, mom, dad, etc. They are all doing AMAZING with this! We are also beginning touch math this week. Touch math is the way I introduce addition to the class, I will post a YouTube video below explaining it. We will be working on addition sums to 5!

First grade:

This week we are looking at the long vowel a and all the spelling patterns that go along with that during our daily 5 rounds. Our spelling words are focusing on the “bossy r”. These skills will help with decoding words in their weekly books. In math we will be working on sums to 20 and beginning unit 2 (missing addends, use of number lines, math vocabulary, number sentences).

Touch Math: I use touch math as a strategy for solving addition and subtraction problems. Touch math is a strategy very similar to counting on but it encourages the students to memorize touch points rather than relying on their fingers to solve math problems. Touch math is a great strategy  for both Kindergarten (sums to 10) and First grade (sums to 20).

I wanted to provide an update following the parent meetings today.

Behavior Management: I use class dojo in my class for behavior management and quick and easy parent communication. Students are awarded points for positive behaviors and points are taken away when needed. If you child loses a dojo point that would be equal to having their color changed via the school-wide system (two lost points would be blue and three would be red with a referral to Mr. Short). With class dojo you are able to see what the points we for (it is an app on your phone). For example, many students get dojo points for following directions quickly or being a leader. I prefer to reward a student for doing the right thing as a redirection to others who may need a reminder.

As parents you are able to see a summary of their day and can view their total points. I will reset the points on Friday each week. If a student is awarded 10 points in one week they will received a prize on Friday 🙂 Some prizes will be from the prize bucket, others may be a special treat inside the classroom (sitting in the teachers chair for the day, free seat, wobble chair, using the teachers special marker, etc).

Reading Logs: Kindergarten students will get a weekly reading log and first grade students will have a monthly reading log (1st grade they are coming tomorrow/Monday)! If you are reading the books from their book bag that evening, you can simply just write “book bag” instead of writing out each title.

Kindergarten Parents: The homework packet will have a slightly different “cover” than the other Kindergarten classes but the reading log is the same and the amount of homework is also the same 🙂

Teaching a split class: As you may have heard in the meetings, most of our instruction is small group instruction during workshop time. Bins are color-coded for the grade levels and the class has been wonderful about working together! My workshop groups are leveled according to the student’s reading level or math ability.

Reading Eggs and Math seeds: If you do not have the login information for these, please let me know. Math seeds is the same login as reading eggs. Kindergarten parents, I am working on reducing the amount of numbers next to your child’s name for logging in to help them be more independent… If this happens, I will send home the new information in their OWL folders 🙂

Please let me know if you have any questions following the meetings today.

Mrs. Chammout

Parents,

Just a reminder that there is a half day tomorrow (October 13th).

Students got a new book today (1st grade also got new sight words), please be sure you are practicing their books and sight words for fluency! 🙂

Have a great weekend,

Mrs. Chammout

Parent Meetings are on Thursday, October 12th –

• Kindergarten: 8:00-8:30 am
• First Grade: 3:45-4:30 pm

Friday the 13th is a Half Day for students.

Class Dojo

• If you have not signed up for class dojo please do that. Thank you to everyone who has already signed up, I look forward to sharing our day with you.
•  If you need assistance signing up, please let me know.

Volunteers 

• Volunteer interest forms will be coming home this week, I hope to have volunteers set up and ready to begin by the end of the month.

Book and Sight Word Bags

• 1st grade students should already be coming home with book bags each night. In addition to book bags, I have added a sight word bag for the students to practice. Sight words are a huge component in fluent reading and sight words should be practiced weekly.
• Kindergarten students will be coming home with book  and sight word bags soon. Please be on the look out for those.

Please let me know if you need anything or have any questions via class dojo or email: chammol@dearbornschools.org.

Have a great week!

My name is Mrs. Chammout and I have been a Kindergarten teacher for the past three years.  I completed my student teaching in a 1st grade classroom, kindergarten and first is where my heart is, I am so excited to be teaching both this year.

I was born and raised in Livonia, Michigan where I currently live with my husband, Mazen. When I graduated from High School I moved to Kalamazoo and attended Western Michigan University. I double majored in Elementary and Early Childhood Education with minors in both Language Arts and Science.  I am currently working on my masters at the University of Michigan- Dearborn in Educational Leadership and I look forward to finishing that soon.

My husband and I just celebrated our first year of marriage and we are focusing on furthering our education before beginning a family of our own.  In our spare time, we enjoy spending our weekends watching football.  My  brother-in-law played football for Michigan State so we are BIG state fans- Go Green! During the winter months we visit my sister in Colorado and also enjoy snowboarding on local Michigan mountains with family and friends.