Week 8. October 1 - 5

Welcome to a new full week of learning and fun!

Please join us in welcoming Ryan and Evan to KG, we’re so happy you guys are part of our KG family!

From the ES Office

Promoting Writing With Your Child

Christy Curran, a literacy consultant with extensive experience as a classroom teacher and coach, is returning to CAC. She will be leading a Coaching Institute with CAC teachers and coaches from other international schools in the region, teaching model lessons in classrooms, and running workshops for teachers and parents. We hope you can join us Wednesday, 11 October, 2:00 to 3:00pm in the 1st Floor Common Room for a presentation on Promoting Writing With Your Child. We are excited to have her back! Christy has worked at the internationally renowned Teachers College Reading and Writing Project as a staff developer.

Weekly Reminders

• Tomorrow’s lunch will be pizza. Monday lunch options are posted on our calendar.
• Dismissal changes. We kindly ask that you email your child’s teacher with any changes in dismissal arrangements. We are responsible for dismissing all students safely and we need your help! If your child usually rides the bus and you decide that another parent will be picking her/him up, please let all the involved know: homeroom teacher and bus monitor. We ask our aides to follow the dismissal arrangements that you have shared with us. Thank you for your support!

Family Picnic

Next Sunday, October 8th we will have our first Family Picnic. We invite you to join us on the ES Lawn for a family picnic during our lunch time 12:10 - 12:50. Students are always very excited to have mom, dad or both join them for lunch at school. If you are joining us, please be sure to explain to your child that you are coming for lunch and that you will say goodbye afterwards. It can be confusing for children when you come in the middle of the day, and then leave without them.

If you are unable to join us for lunch, the other children and teachers will be keeping your child company, we just kindly ask that you let us know ahead of time and you also tell your child. It is important for them to hear this from you :)

CAC Core Values

Starting today we will be sharing our core value books with all Kindergarten families. A book bag has been sent home with one of our students to give families a chance to read this book and talk about the core value for September: Respect.

We have included a parent letter in the book bag with more information. Please make sure you send this book bag tomorrow to share the book with another family.

Learning in KG!

Reading Workshop

This week we start our second unit, which will focus on reading “Superpowers.” This unit will nurture independence in kindergarten readers and introduce different ways to read carefully. One of this week’s “Superpowers” that will be shared with students is that readers use “pointer power” to point to each word that they want to read. Reading partners will continue to meet during reader’s workshop and read aloud, to read books together and ask each other questions.

Our phonics focus will be recognizing the letters /c/, /h/, /f/, and /d/ in capital and lowercase form.

Writing Workshop

This week writers will publish books! Kindergarten students will get their first chance to truly edit and revise for publishing. Students use checklists and simple rubrics to make sure their work is neat, makes sense, and is ready to be shared with others. They will be guided through this last part of the writing process before adding colorful artwork and a cover to their finished piece. We will celebrate this writing milestone by sharing our books with students from our class. These special, student-made books will have a home in our classroom libraries for a while before being sent home to be enjoyed again and again.

Next week we will start our second writing unit called “True stories”. Students will continue to learn about the writing process while writing narratives. To support our young writers, we ask that you please send to school lots of photos of your child’s life. These photos will be used as idea generators during the writing workshop, as our most significant memories always make the best stories!

Social Studies

Kindergartners  will continue to explore what it is to be a responsible student in class and a responsible member of the community . They will discussing what responsibility looks like and how it ties in with their goals at school in at school and in life. They will also be thinking about who is in our CAC community to gather ideas about who are other responsible members of our school community.

Math

This week our classes will be focusing on the concept of “ one more”, with the notion that each successive number is one more than the previous one.

Students will be also be reviewing the different ways they have already learned to count numbers, by mentally grouping objects in 5-groups, in linear configurations and by circular counting!

Here is further information on what the students will be learning this week:

At the end of each concept development, students demonstrate understanding by solving a problem set. Some of these have just one side and we all complete as a class, some others have two sides. The first side is completed by having students do their best as they hear teacher instructions, then they choose to solve the other side on their own. Some students may choose to complete this other side at home.

Thank you for your continuous support and involvement by reading our newsletters!

Feel free to email us if you have any questions.

Mr. Balazs

Ms. Ana

Ms. Paola