Mo Willems

Poem: Come and Listen
Sight Word: to, me

Reading:
Strategy: This week our big strategy was to use the pictures and beginning sounds. This is one of the first stages of pre-reading. Illustrations can provide hints to help students decode a word.

Another skill that is important that we have been working hard at is beginning sounds. When given a word students are able to give the initial sound they hear. For example after hearing the word cat, students are encouraged to produce the beginning sound; /c/.

Vocabulary: This week we started off our expanded vocabulary with the story, "Friends at School". Throughout the school year we will read stories and dissect the meaning of 6 words within the story. These words will be added to our chart in the room.

Writing: This week we continued with our handwriting, learning how to write letters Hh, Yy, Ww, Vv, and Xx.

Math:
Vocabulary: The math term that we learned this week was rectangle, square, circle, hexagon, and triangle.

Our math words helped us determine the difference between our 2D shapes. This is a report card skill that we will be working hard on the next few weeks. Students are expected to recall the name of the shape, the number of sides, and number of corners. Students first learn about the shapes with making a chart and learning the 2D shape song. Throughout the week students practiced making the shapes with playdoh and geoboards!

Content: This week we did our first author study! We learned about Mo Willems and read many of his books including Elephant and Piggie and the pigeon books! We did activities throughout the week learning about Mo.

Colors

Poem: Little Snail
Sight Words: is, at

Reading:
Strategy: This week we worked on Check for Understanding. This is a comprehension strategy that teaches children to stop frequently and check, or monitor, whether they understand what they are reading. This typically is a quick summary of what they’ve read, starting with “who” and “what.” After reading a page, we say aloud "Check for Understanding" while making a checkmark in the air with our finger.

How can you help your child at home with this strategy? Ask these questions:
-“Who did you just read about and what just happened?”
-“How often did you stop to check for understanding? After each sentence, after each paragraph, at the end of each page?”
-“What do you do if you don’t remember?”

This week we also continued working on consonants. Knowing each letter of the alphabet (in no particular order) and sounds are crucial at the beginning of the year.

We also added different choices to word work this week. Students practiced making letters with playdoh.

We also learned about Read with Someone as a choice during Daily 5 Reading. As a class we wrote down our expectations on our I-chart and practiced reading with someone. Look at these great readers!

Writing: We finished up with handwriting this week with the letters Pp, Rr, Mm, and Nn. We had fun by decorating P's with popcorn, painting rainbows for R, making Mm headbands for the letter Mm, and finishing the week with making yummy froot loop "n"ecklaces for Nn.

Math:
Vocabulary: Rectangular Array
We had our second math term this week, rectangular array. This is when objects are put together in rows and columns to look like a rectangle. We talk about how we see many rectangular arrays in real life including muffins tins, egg cartons, box of crayons, and waffles to name a few.

We made our I-chart for Math by Myself learning all the expectations for this choice during math. We also continued working with our numbers. A big skill at the beginning of the year is recognizing numbers 1-20 and also showing/counting that number with 1:1 correspondence. (This means if the number 16 is said aloud then kiddos are able to use math tools, like counting bears, to count out 16.)

DOT DAY: On Friday we celebrated National Dot Day! This was the first year for our school to celebrate this day and it was so fun! Mrs. Cauble read, "The Dot" to the entire kindergarten and during the day we also decorated our own dots that were added to the communi-tree in the hallway with other students in the school. This book has a great message and is about the free spirit and creativity in all of us!

Content: This week our focus was colors. We learned color songs and identified things that were certain colors. We also experimented each day by mixing colors together to see what color the two made. We finished the week with one of our favorites, Pete the Cat "I love my White Shoes". Students worked on their color craft that complimented the story.