April 19-22

We are so excited to have our staff developer from Teacher's College here this Thursday and Friday. Ms. Brianna will be working in our classrooms and with all New Directions teachers for training and labsites. We are so fortunate to have this opportunity!

Remember to send back your child's monthly homework calendar each Friday so that we can celebrate the reading and writing they are doing each week! 

Upcoming events: 

• April 18th: No School 
• April 20th: Earth Day--please return permission slips!
• April 21-22: Columbia Staff Developer is here
• April 29 and May 3: PALs Testing

What’s happening in Kindergarten this week?

Reading: As we continue to learn about becoming avid readers, students will have "playdates" during their partner reading time. According to research on cognitive development, children increase focus, stamina, self-regulation abilities, and abstract thinking through play. During the "reading playdates", book clubs will meet and can choose from a variety of fun activities to do with books. These activities could include: acting books out, playing school, having a read aloud, hunting for sight words, etc. Try one of these fun games while reading with your child at home! 

Writing: Writers are beginning to craft true stories for this next unit. We will start to brain storm by making book covers to help us hang onto our ideas. As readers, we know that we can take a picture walk to understand how a story will go. We will use that idea and quickly draw the pages of the book before we write. It's like a writing picture walk. Then as we think about writing the words, we will say them out loud and ask ourselves “does that make sense?” before writing. 

Math: As we push toward the end of Kindergarten, we will be doing many centers and activities to practice adding and subtracting within ten.  

We will rotate through the following centers: 

• Students will create a partners of ten book.  
• Using a Math Expressions activity book page, ink, and stampers, students will create a teen number book. This will help students visualize teen numbers in a ten frames. 
• Mathematicians will play a game called Addition Crossout. Here is a copy:

• Students will tell math stories that match the equations on a Math Expressions Activity book page.  

Word Study: Our sight words are:  were, now, made, saw, & our.

We will be working on these endings in our sorts: ug, ig, ag, eg, and og. 

Here are our sight words.

Science: Students have been LOVING our research on balls and ramps so far. After looking at videos, books, and pictures, we have come up with three questions to guide our inquiry:

• What makes a ball move?
• What is the ball made of? 
• What is inside the ball?

This week, we will begin hands on exploration. Students will explore the characteristics balls and what factors affect movement.