Welcome back to a new week of learning, exploring and having fun together!
Halloween was a success! Students had a wonderful day in their costumes and playing games in our grade activities. A big shout out to our room parents for their support and to Ms. Farrah, Ms. Menna and Ms. Dalia for preparing all materials for each activity,. Thank you!
Weekly reminders!
- Thursday, library bags!
- PE (Physical Education) uniforms. Students are expected to wear their PE uniforms on both PE days.
- Reading parent session - Tomorrow Monday from 8 to 9am in the 1st floor common room.
- Home Reading - Students must return the books they borrow from school for reading practice at home. We truly appreciate your support in this matter!
- Monday, October 30th is a half day - Students will be dismissed at 11:30 am. This day there will be no hot lunch.
- We will have another fun House Event on Tuesday, October 31st. If your child does not have a house shirt, they can wear a shirt of their house color. Click here to see our KG House Teams (you can also find them in the blog’s upper menu)
Learning In KG!
Reading Workshop
Our super readers have done an amazing job learning a variety of Reading Superpowers. When they read independently, you can see them using picture power, pointer power, snap word power, sound power, and more. More impressively, these readers can describe to you which super power they are using to solve a tricky word. This week students will learn about the power of persistence in tackling tricky words and sentences. They will learn to activate multiple super powers to persevere through just-right books. Later, they will work with a reading partner to identify reading superpowers to one another. The classroom will be filled with comments like, “You just used picture power!” and “Try using re-read power for that word.”
We are super readers!
At home, you might encourage your child to find the ‘snap words’ words they know. One prompt we give kindergartners when we coach them in one-on-one instruction is “Look for words you know, then reread from the beginning”
Spotlight on: Phonics
We continue to work with beginning sounds in Kindergarten. Students are now more independent when working with their phonic sorts and finding patterns in the words they read and the letter sounds they start with. Partners are working together to practice beginning sounds by playing memory games, race to sort and supporting each other as they take risks to write some of these words they work with on a weekly basis.
We offer students opportunities to extend their work by suggesting other patterns in the sounds they work with. Some students notice similar endings and we talk to them about word families and support them in sorting words that rhyme. Some students may notice the middle sound in CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant) and those short vowels we will be working with soon, so we support them in sorting words by the vowel they hear in the middle of the word.
This week we will work to recognize four letters: Qq, Zz, Yy, and Vv.
Writing Workshop
Writers are working hard every day! This week, students will continue to revise and add more to their stories with the help of a partner. As writers work on adding sentences to each page, they are reminded of the “sound it out” strategy to write a letter for each sound they hear. Partners can also help each other listening to all those sounds in each word to support invented spelling, these sentences are also getting stronger as writers add sight words or “snap words” they already know how to spell such as: I, the, go.
Our young writers continue to experiment with more writing tools to support their writing process. Using a blue pen for revision has been a success for most students and this week we will introduce “revision flaps” as another tool for writers to add more! As we get closer to the end of this unit, writers will focus on stories that they have already written and think of more details that can be added to make them even more enjoyable. Partners will also play an important role in this task, by asking questions to draw on details:
- Who was there?
- Where were you?
- What did you do?
- How did you feel when that happen?
These questions will give ideas to all writers on what to add. The revision flaps will be pieces of paper they can glue to their initial draft. Looking forward to see more detailed stories!
Math
This week students will wrap up work on Module 2 “Two- dimensional and three dimensional shapes’ and they will begin working on Module 3 “ Comparison of length, weight, capacity, and numbers to 10”. This week, mathematicians will compare length and weight of objects, by examining them side by side. They will be learning first- hand that the endpoints of the of the objects will need to be aligned in order for the comparison to be accurate.
Circles
The CAC core value for November is compassion and children will be discussing the different ways we can show empathy and compassion in the classroom and outside. We will be conducting compassion circles to reinforce this core value as part of our ongoing community building exercises. The book for compassion that we will be using in Kindergarten classes is The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig.
Social Studies
This week students will be introduced to a new Social Studies unit: Little Me in a Big School. In it, they will learn all about our vibrant CAC community and get to know some of the people who work to make CAC great every day. To get started we will learn about what a school community is and who is included. Then we will try and make a list of all the people we know who work at CAC. Eventually, students will conduct interviews with CAC employees to learn about who they are and what they do. It is a fun and engaging unit of study and we can’t wait to get started!
Thank you for your continuous support. Please email us with any feedback or questions you may have.
Thank you!
Ms. Ana, Ms. Paola, and Mr. Balazs
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