Room 111 KDG Newsletter
Week of January 9th, 2017
Dear Families,
Happy New Year! I hope this newsletter finds you all well rested and recharged to start a wonderful new year full of good health and love. I have had a wonderful and relaxing vacation with family and friends and as always miss my classroom kiddos! I am so proud of those students that went on RazKids and got started reading over the break! Your child was rewarded 500 bonus points from the teacher for their hard work!
With the start of the New Year, there will be some adjustments to our weekly homework assignments and the addition of our weekly spelling word families (and tests) to our individualized spelling program! This is very exciting and I feel we are ready to take on a more sophisticated school to home connection now. Here is what you need to know:
Spelling:
Each week, your child will be responsible for learning one or two new sight words from the pre-primer Dolch high frequency Sight Word list as usual. In addition, in January the kdg students in DPS begin learning “word families”. This week, our first word family is the “–at word family.” The teacher will send home a family note on Mondays which introduces the words your child is responsible to practice and learn. We will work on them every day in school and your child will take a weekly assessment every Friday to monitor their progress of the word families and Dolch high frequency sight words. I have circled three words on the –at family note that will be the “hot words” or words that you know I am putting on the assessment. In addition, the teacher will pick two “cold words” that will make a total of five words tested so make sure your child practices ALL SEVEN WORDS. The last word on the test will be the Dolch word of the week. As always, if any of this seems confusing please feel free to pop in and see me, or send me an email! I will respond within 24 hours!
Homework:
Your child will continue making their phonics folder with the “letter of the week” for homework. In addition, I will be sending home a small “packet” of homework pages instead of the monthly calendars. This will allow students more practice of classroom skills and new word families! As always, I recommend one page per night so your child does not become overwhelmed! Homework packets will be handed out on Mondays and collected the following Mondays from now on giving your child seven days to complete them. Each week your child turns in their homework, they will get a point. At the end of each month, they can pick a prize from the prize box for their hard work! Remember, reading is also part of homework every night for 20 minutes and Raz Kids absolutely counts!
NWEA: This month we will be taking our NWEA test for the second time. This is an important assessment in math and reading and you can help your child prepare for it by reading daily and completing their homework every night. Also, the night before please make sure your child gets a great night sleep and eats a healthy breakfast. Also, please talk to your child about how this is just one test, but it should be taken seriously and they should take their time to listen and mark the best answers they can instead of rushing through and just clicking. As always, their report cards are affected by this assessment now and we want to show our best progress. I am excited to see changes in our growth data!
Mrs. Ross’s iBlog:
Please make sure that you are reading my iblog every Week! This newsletter was printed on paper, however the district requires me to use the blog to communicate more efficiently. If you are not registered please type in the following link and register for the blog. ALL important information regarding curriculum and classroom news are being communicated through this. I thank you for your help and support to make your child’s year successful! Please come and see me if you need help registering it takes two minutes! Just enter your email address on the homepage and hit create subscription!
https://iblog.dearbornschools.org/ross/
Have a wonderful month, and please look to the iblog from now on each Monday for all classroom information! Happy New Year to my wonderful classroom and families!
Mrs. Ross
Important Dates:
January 16th: No school
January 18th: Late Start
January 27th: 11:10 Dismissal