Dear Families,

I hope you are all enjoying this beautiful weekend! If I’m being honest it’s WAY too hot for me LOL! Our family have spent another weekend watching my beautiful boy play soccer and baseball with his friends. As we head into our second full week there are a few reminders and what curriculum we will work on in class:

1. Please send in a family picture for the class to make it cozy for Daily 5. Thank you Griffin for sending in your pics already! I’d love us to make some cute picture frames together this week and get them on our walls 🙂
2. Raz Kids, Xtra Math and Spelling city.com are up and ready for your child to visit 10-20 min. daily and to have fun for homework!
3. Popcorn sales are Fridays and popcorn is 25 cents a bag!
4. If you haven’t had a chance to sign up for conferences please see me after school to grab a spot! I’ll bring out my clipboard each day after school this week 🙂
5. All KDG teachers in the district have a PD this Friday so Ms. Shapas and I will be out of the building and your children do not have school on Friday! My first graders will be split up between Ms. Kerby and Ms. Jumaa’s classes Friday again.

*This week’s curriculum standards and lesson plans:

1. Social Studies: We will spend a third week learning and developing classroom and building policies, procedures.  We will be working on being a great citizen, working in a group and getting along with others! This week we will continue a unit on citizenship! This week we will further our lesson on rules and laws and add a lesson about “good and bad choices”. We will read the book “What If Everybody Did That?” by Ellen Javernick to help us with our learning.
2. Math: This week we will continue Unit 1 in Kdg and 1st grade. We will continue learning the expectations and procedures of my “math workshop” approach. It is comprised of mini lessons, independent and team stations, games and individual groups. Last week we did a beautiful job with the mini lessons, a few games and introducing the math journal as the final review component.  This week my goal is to introduce the “independent” work stations where they play games with partners in small groups after each mini lesson.  🙂
3. Writer’s Workshop: we will continue this week to learn, and practice teachers structure and expectations for writer’s workshop! This week we will work on “how” to use basic shapes to help us draw pictures, introduce a stamina chart for independent writing time (introduce the classical music and build how many minutes we “work”  with the correct expectations, introduce and continue working on “share time”, doing our best work (reading a story called “Ish” all about encouragement) and detailed pictures (reading the story “The Crayon Box That Talked” to help with this).
4. Language Arts: This week we will continue working on our first component of Daily 5 “Read to Self”. We will continue practicing the teachers structure and expectations for Daily 5. We will begin to build “stamina” for independent reading which will take place while the teachers is instructing students in small groups. This week I will begin small “mini lessons” in between each round of independent reading to self. The mini lessons will be composed of rhyming, separating sentences into words, identifying initial sounds, and our trade book for the weed “Huggapotamus” which has a theme about “friendship” which ties in so nicely with our social studies unit!
5. Spelling: First graders assessment will be on Friday this week with the first grade teachers while I am at a PD for KDG. All students please begin logging into spellingcity.com to help you learn and play!
   1. First Graders Week 2: id and ig families (rid, slid, hid, kid, fig, dig, pig, twig
   2. Dolch words this week for K/1: and, he, a
6. Reading Packs: As the teachers continues to assess and organize students skills, I will begin sending home reading packs with letters, or sight words to begin learning! The reading packs will all have different tools in them specifically for your child. If you child is “reading” ready they will have their first green card with the first 40 Dolch high frewuency sight words, and will begin getting paper emergent readers and eventually small books. If your child is working on letter and sound recognition in the alphabet as well as their own name, they will receive a car with the letters they need to work on, and well as a name game to help them learn and write their first names and paper emergent readers at level A. All students can and should begin using Raz-kids nightly.  Please make sure your child’s reading pack goes home and BACK each day with their red folder! Thank you in advance for ALL you are asked to do this year!
7. Homework: This week I will be sending you home a fun math game to play with your child each night! It is very easy and fun and will come with instructions. In addition, I will send you home a list of “number sense” and counting and cardinality ideas to play with them that we do each day in school. No pressure, just some fun and easy ways to help your child build number sense and foundation skills with numbers 0-10.

Have a wonderful week and if there is anything I am missing I will be sure to write again asap!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Ross 🙂

*Important Dates:

–Conferences Thursday November 9th, 15th, 16th (if you have not signed up yet see me after school this week! If you have, i’ll send you a reminder on paper the week prior)