Happy New Year! I hope everyone's 2013 is off to a TERRIFIC start! It was great to be back in the classroom again. I really missed all of my kindergarten kiddos! We had a busy and productive week as we eased back into our daily routines.
All About Me
This week we learned all about Nikolas and some of his favorite things. We learned that he loves swimming and collecting shells, and he likes to play games at Chuck E. Cheese. The class loved his hacky sack, and they especially loved the picture of Nikolas riding in his go kart. So cool!
Math
This week the students used a set of number cards to practice ordering the numbers 0-20. They did a great job sequencing and reading these numbers!
We also explored the concept of probability and introduced the terms: impossible, possible, certain, likely, and unlikely. We read a story called Ducks Don't Wear Socks and identified which events in the story were possible and which were impossible such as---a duck riding a bike, playing a guitar, or wearing underwear! It was a fun story and a great way to reinforced the concepts of impossible vs. possible.
Jolly Phonics
We jumped right back into Jolly Phonics this week! We introduced the following sounds:
ch as in "choo-choo"
Yy as in "yogurt"
Xx as in "fox"
This week we introduced the first of our "h-brothers," which include /ch/, /th/, and /sh/. Learning and recognizing these letter combinations will be helpful when reading and writing new words. When learning about the letter "y" this week, we talked about how sometimes it is easy to confuse the sound for "y" with the /w/ sound instead of the /y/ sound. We will continue to review these sounds as well as all the sounds we have learned in class. Please take time at home to review these sounds as well, especially the trickier sounds with double letters or long vowel sounds.
Writing
The students did a great job writing about what they did over winter vacation. I loved reading about where they went and what they did over break. During writer's workshop time, the students continue to practice drawing a picture, labeling their picture, and writing down their ideas. When writing our sentences, we have been working to start with a capital letter, end with a period, and leave a space between each word.
Animal Unit in Treasures
We began our animal unit in Treasures this week by reading a story about a mama cat and her sleepy kitten named Boris. We also worked to create a word web about different categories of animals including: farm animals, zoo animals, animals we would find in nature, and animals we might keep as pets. We also read about cold weather animals in our Time for Kids magazine. We will continue to add to our web throughout our animal unit.
We created a mini-book about pet care and completed a sorting activity about which animals would make good pets. We will work on sorting again next week during our shell unit when we try to classify different types of seashells.
Assessments
This week I used our normal small group guided reading time to individually assess the students' reading progress. I will be finishing up these assessments next week. All kindergarten students will also be assessed next week on letter names and letter sounds as part of our winter benchmarking period, and sometime over the next two weeks they will also be given two quick math assessments--one for number identification and one for counting given quantities. The information gathered from each of these assessments helps us to track individual student growth and plan for instruction that targets individual student needs. Let me know if you have any questions!
Looking forward to another great week in kindergarten!
Hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend.
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