News From the Jungle

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! See you on Monday!

Remember, if you have not already sent your child’s library book back, please do so on Monday in order for them to check out a new book!

If you have not yet signed up for a conference, please email me at dimitrm@dearbornschools.org

Upcoming Events

9/25 Late Start – arrival at 9:35am. School starts 9:40am.

9/26 PBIS Party – Yard Games

9/27 No school for Kindergarten students ONLY!!!

Agenda for the Week

We continue learning the routines and procedures of Daily 5. The children had the opportunity to practice work on writing, read to self, and word work. The children are busy building stamina for each round to sit and work quietly longer each day. We learned that there are three ways to read a book. 1) read the words 2) read the pictures 3)retell the story using their own words.

I will be grouping the students next week based on how many uppercase and lowercase letters they know, as well as how many sounds. We will work in small group instruction during our Daily 5 time on letters and sounds. During the month of October I will be assessing reading levels and begin sending books home in November.

This week we worked on the letters Bb and Yy, as well as the sounds these letters make. We learned how to write each letter and where each letter should be written on the line. The children learned that some letters stand on the line, some sit on the line, and some hang down below the line. We practice writing in a straight line without having any letters floating or crooked.

Please utilize RazKids, Readingeggs, and Mathseeds at home. These are all wonderful resources to progress your child’s skills. When your child first logs on to Readingeggs and Mathseeds, it will ask them to take an assessment. This assesses their skill set and places them at the lesson that is best suited for them. Some of your children may start on lesson one or some may start on lesson nine. I love these programs because they place the kids at their own learning level!

We got together with our 2nd grade buddies several times this week to complete an owl project. The children learned facts about owls all week from books and videos. We completed a R.A.N. Strategy together, which stands for Reading and Analyzing Non-Fiction Texts. We wrote down things we thought we knew about owls. Then we watched videos and read books and we confirmed facts that we already knew and wrote down new facts we learned. Our owl project turned out great!

Here is a picture:

We will be adding some facts that we wrote down to our bulletin board next week!

Housekeeping Items:

Snack Time

Please be sure to put the snack in a separate place from their lunch. Please show your child where you will put their snack each day in order to foster independence for them. Sometimes, when the snack is packed inside the lunchbox, the children try to eat their whole lunch at snack time. Please only send one snack with your child. Thank you for your assistance in separating your child’s snack and lunch.

Snacks should be healthy to provide the children with energy for their day. Please send a simple snack such as fruit, vegetables, cheese, and crackers. Please do not send candy as a snack. Juice and milk are not allowed in our classroom. Please do not send any kind of juice box or milk with your child for snack time. The children may have the juice or milk for lunch in the cafeteria.

Folders

Please make sure to empty the folder each night! It is very difficult and time consuming to locate homework or important notes when the folder is full of papers from the day before. Please be sure to send the folder to school each day. It is a big part of our arrival and dismissal routines and the folders help the children keep all of their papers organized