Miss Murray’s Class News 1/26/24
We had another great week in kindergarten! We are busy learning and having fun! Check out what we were up to this week.
Sight Words: Our two sight words this week: all and were. Next week we will learn we and when. Is your child practicing their sight words at home? Try using them as flash cards or practicing them before bedtime!
Phonics: Our phonics focus this week was word families –op and –ot and –og. Students cut out their sort cards (that now have pictures and words), played memory match, glued them onto their graphic organizer and lastly spelled our own words within these word families. Some even wrote sentences in their writing journals using words that ended in –op and –ot and –og!
Literacy Centers: We worked hard in literacy centers this week! At the iPad center, students read along to books on Epic and played Teach Monster to Read. We switched our decodable books during the library center and practiced writing sentences in the sight word center. At the phonics center, students wrote “silly sentences” by filling in the blanks with objects. Ask your child if they can remember a sentence they wrote! We continue to practice letters, sounds, CVC words, and reading comprehension in our reading center.
Writer’s Workshop: This week we began our “How-to” unit. We read the story Charlie Needs a Cloak and noticed the author added new pictures and words to show the different steps he took to make a cloak. We decided we could write just like the author, Tomie dePaola! We wrote a “how-to” story as a class, and then students wrote their own how-to stories (in three steps) using pictures and words. Next week we will add transition words such as “First,” “Next,” “Then,” and “Last.”
We continue to write our own real or make-believe stories and adding details using our five senses to help give us ideas for details. We continue to focus on including 4 things in our sentences, using our writing checklist:
1. Capital letters at the beginning of a sentence.
2. Spaces between words.
3. Period at the end of a sentence.
4. Mostly lowercase letters.
Math: This week began chapter 5: Addition! Chapter 5’s essential question is: How can I use objects to add? We learned some key words: add, join, and in all. “Join” and “in all” are special math word clues that tell us information of how to solve a problem.
Kelso’s Choice: Miss Shaw, our school counselor visited our classroom this week! She will be coming into our class this trimester to introduce the class to our conflict management skills curriculum, Kelso’s Choices. There are 9 different specific strategies for children to use to solve small problems on their own. The choices are wonderful because it empowers our students to solve problems at recess, in the classroom, at home, everywhere! The “wheel of choices” can be found in the “helpful handouts” page. We are excited to learn about Kelso’ Choices this trimester!
Common Core Standards we’re working on:
- I can read common sight words.
- I can count to 100 by ones and tens.
- I can count forward beginning with a given number within the known sequence (instead of starting at 1)
- Identify whether the number of objects in one group is greater than, less than, or equal to the number of objects in another group, e.g., by using matching and counting strategies.
- I can read emergent level text with purpose and understanding.
- With prompting and support, I can ask and answer questions about key details in text.
- I can spell simple words phonetically.
- I can read CVC words.
- I can speak audibly and express thoughts, feelings and ideas clearly.
- I can read the words in a book in the right order.
- I can tell how the words and pictures go together in stories.
- I can say the most common sound for each consonant in the alphabet.
- I can draw or write to help me share what I think.
- I can help my class learn about a subject and then write about it.
- I can print lots of upper and lowercase letters.
- I can write numbers from 0-20.
Important Dates:
- January 28th – February 3rd – Catholic Schools Week. Please see school website for more details on this week!
- Wednesday, February 7th – Dress Uniform, Primary Mass, 9am. Join us if you can!
- Friday, February 9th – No School, Teacher In-Service
- Tuesday, February 13th– Valentine’s Day Celebration (a day early due to Ash Wednesday Mass)
- Please bring in a covered shoebox (any plain paper will do, do not decorate!); we will be decorating them in class!
- Your child may bring in one Valentine for each student in our class (22 students). No names please!
- Wednesday February 14th – Dress Uniform, Ash Wednesday Mass, 9am
- Friday February 16th – Noon Dismissal – Winter Holiday
- Monday February 19th – Tuesday February 20th – No School, Winter Holiday
- Friday, March 8th – No School, Staff Retreat
- March 29th – Noon Dismissal, Easter Break
- April 1st-April 5th – No School, Easter Break