Hi Families,
I hope you had a wonderful weekend! This is the newsletter for this past week. Reading: I had the pleasure of getting to read with each child last Tuesday for our F & P day! It was such a joy to see all of the growth that they have made and how proud they are of their reading ability! The F & P data, which helps us to get a formal assessment of what reading level they are at. These scores will be available on their second trimester report card, which will be coming out soon! We continued our work on vowels and digraphs. Writing: We finished our true stories and will be actually starting "how to" writing this week! Math: We started our fourth math module this week, which is centered around number bonds and addition and subtraction. The kids had so much fun learning about them! On Friday your child was sent home with any previous math workbooks from previous modules. If they are not finished, not a worry, sometimes we replace the workbook with other extension activities so you are more than welcome to complete the unfinished pages at home if you wish. Other News: - Our 100th day celebration was so much fun! The kids loved all of the different 100th day themed activities (stacking cups, writing word, 100th day fruit loop necklace, 100 piece legos, writing to 100, 100th day crown, etc.). I was also so impressed by the 100th day projects, they all turned out so amazing! Since the school is closed to volunteers at this point in time (due to the virus) I will take a picture of all the projects on Monday and post it on SeeSaw for you to see. - STEM buddies, on Wednesday, we had the pleasure of getting together with our fourth grade buddies! This was an extension of our 100 day project as students were given 100 marshmallows and some toothpicks to create structures out of them. The kids had to much fun building them and were really creative! - It was so great to see your smiling faces at the Kindergarten Dance night, thank you so much for coming out and dancing along with everyone. It truly is a special night to see everyone together! :) - This coming week is Kindness Week! Our whole school will be celebrating throughout the week and working to spread kindness all over Maple Hills! In conjunction with Kindness Week next week, Student Council is sponsoring a donation drive for Children’s Hospital. Every day next week, we will be collecting donations by grade level. The grade level that collects the most donations will win a free recess. Please see the attached Children’s Hospital Wish List. A hard copy will also be coming home with your child today. If you have any questions about the drive please contact the advisors. [email protected] and [email protected]. Thank you! Kelly Brunell and Amber Bryant
0 Comments
Hi Families,
I hope you all had a great weekend! It was so great to be back with everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful Mid-Winter Break. Math: We just finished our 3rd math module (height, weight, less than and more than) and took our module assessment on Friday. This assessment will be sent back home along with their module 3 workbook. We will begin Module 4 this week which will focus on number pairs, addition and subtraction to 10. The parent tip sheet will also be sent home this week. Reading: This week we focused on building our reading stamina. We have made it all the way to 8 minutes and 30 seconds of sustained reading! We also continued our work on vowels and continuing to use our knowledge of them within our writing. We have also started talking about digraphs this week (two letters that make a new sound, ex: ph, sh, wh, th, ch). I also sent home a letter, sound, and sight word assessment last week. This was meant as a tool to help guide your child's reading at home. Our goal by the end of the year is for students to know all of their letters, sounds and sight words, but at this point in the year, we're working towards that goal with no expectation for perfection at this point. If you have any questions regarding this please let me know. Writing: This week we focused on getting our writing ready to publish by using a checklist and making sure our pictures are 5 star pictures (no white space, color within the lines, colors make sense, add details, 5 or more colors). In addition, we worked on checking our writing to make sure we are adding sentences and our sight word wall. This week we will be finishing our narrative unit and starting our "how to" unit. Science: This week we talked about solids, liquids, and gases and the properties of each. Social Emotional: We have been working on labeling our feelings and using our words to tell others how we feel. Other Events:
Hi Families,
I hope you all have had a great weekend and stayed dry with the crazy weather! Here is what we worked on last week: Reading/Phonics:
Writing:
Math:
Social Studies:
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70a094ca8ab28abfa7-stemposium. My goal is to have as many kiddos presenting as possible. There are shifts so you would not need to stay the entirety of the evening. This is such a wonderful opportunity for students to see what everyone is doing throughout the district. Please let me know if you have any questions, I would love to have people signed up by Monday evening or Tuesday morning. Thank you! Valentine's Day Celebration:
Each year Maple Hills Student Council sells Valentine cards that students send to students and staff at school! The Student Council sells them at recess and then delivers them! It is a much loved Maple Hills Tradition! Here is how it works for Kindergarten:
Please email the Student Council advisors with any questions. Kelly Brunell [email protected] Amber Bryant [email protected] Hi Families!
I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and are having a great Superbowl Sunday! I just wanted to send out our weekly newsletter so you know what we have been up to. Math: We are continuing to work on the concept of heavier than and lighter than. This week we started talking about capacity and the conservation of it. Students also practiced using counting collections (students are given a bag of items and are asked to count them and explain their thinking) with a partner which helps students to not only work together but also explain their thinking in a variety of ways. In addition, we continued working on word problems. This is something that we will continue to focus on throughout the remainder of the year. As we develop our understanding and ability to independently complete word problems, students will be given a variety of strategies that they can use to show their thinking. Reading/Phonics: We started our work on beginning sounds, students had to sort pictures based upon which letter they started with. We will continue to work on beginning sounds and will start ending sounds soon. In addition, we worked on creating our own individual word wall. Students worked on adding more sight words to their word bank which in turn, helps them stay focused when tracking their reading. We also talked about the importance of sight words and how they are words that they can't always sound out and need to be able to identify in a snap. Writing: Students worked on adding to their true stories. We worked on pushing ourselves to write sentences with spaces and punctuation. I am so proud of how hard students have been working on these stories, they have some great ones to share! On Friday, we talked about the importance of rereading our writing so that it makes sense for our audience. If we don't reread our writing it might not make sense to whoever is reading our story. Science: This week we started our new unit on solids, liquids, and gases. We first started with an inquiry lesson, students were given a variety of images (that represented solids, liquids, and gases) and were asked to sort them into two or three piles. Students had to come up with an explanation for each pile (I did not give them an explanation of what the picture cards represented). We then watched a BrainPop video on solids, liquids and gases. If you and your student would like to re-watch thisvideo you can access it via their Clever account. We will continue our exploration of the unit this week. Social Studies: We read It's Okay to be Different by Todd Par and talked about how everyone is different which in turn makes us all unique. Students were then asked to draw a picture and write a sentence about what makes them different/ unique and we were able to celebrate our differences! Other news:
Please let me know if you have any questions regarding this newsletter. As always, thank you so much for all that you do! Have a great rest of your evening. Hi Families,
I hope you all have had a great weekend. Friendly reminder, tomorrow is a teacher work day so there is no school. Here is all of the things that we did this week: Phonics: This week we wrapped up our syllables unit. Students are now able to separate parts of words that they hear. They are able to demonstrate their understanding by clapping out words or sorting pictures by syllables. We will be working on beginning and ending sounds as well as CVC words next. Reading: This week we worked on tapping words as we read. This is a way for students to track what they are reading. Students are only allowed to tap once for each word that they read. One trick to accurately tapping was counting the amount of words in each sentence. We also talked about the importance of spaces between words and how that impacts not only our reading but also our writing. Writing: We worked on finishing our first true story. Students focused on adding dialogue to their stories and talking about how their charters were feeling/saying in their stories. We also focused on making sure that our pictures matched our words. When trying to sound out longer words we can use our pictures to help remind us what we are writing. Math: We continued working on our third math module. We focused on the math concepts of: measurement and weight: longer and shorter, as well as lighter and heavier. We will continue to work on weight. I will also be sending home the parent resource for this module this week. We also started working on story problems. Students worked on drawing the problem out, labeling the pictures, circling a group of 5, writing an equation, and answering the question. On Friday, module 2 assessments were sent home, please let me know if you have any questions regarding it. Science: Science to go came this week and students had the opportunity to explore the rocks lab. They talked about different characteristics of rocks such as: texture, mass, color, and shape. Students absolutely loved this experience! Other news:
Coming up:
Hi Families,
Happy New Year! I hope you all have had a great start to 2020 and a good first week back to school. It was so nice to see everyone and be back at school. Here are all of the fun things that we did this week! Reading: We worked on using our pointer power (tracking words) to touch each word as we read. As super readers, the more we practice this skill the stronger our reading muscles become. Students practiced finding and pointing to sight words as they read. We also worked on building our reading stamina back up after the break and almost made it to 8 minutes! Writing: We started a new writing unit this week called personal narratives. We first started with sorting all of our books in our writing folders: by easy to read and not so easy to read. Students realized after sorting their books that those with words, pictures, and labels made it easier to read than those without. Students also realized that easier to read books had a space for writing and then a space for pictures. We then talked about the steps to writing personal narratives: (1. Think (something that has happened or something that they have done) 2. Practice (students use a storyteller's voice to practice telling their story to a partner before they start writing) 3. Add Pictures and Words (who, where, what happened)). We will continue to work on writing our personal narratives. Math: We started our third math module this week. We will be focusing on measurement and weight in this new unit. This week our focus was on identifying objects as shorter than or longer than. Phonics: This week we focused on syllables. Students had to identify how many syllables were in a given word and then had to clap out that word. Other news:
Hi Families!
I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! Here is our weekly update as well as upcoming events! Reading:
Hi Families,
I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! Here are all of the things that we did last week. I also wanted to let you know that since next week is shortened, there will not be a newsletter next Sunday. Reading: This week, we worked on stretching out all of the sounds that we hear in words in addition to tapping and reading exact words. Students are working hard to tap the exact words that they are reading (ex: if the title of the book is called My Birthday, they would tap two times, one for each word). We attended the book fair on Friday and students had so much fun! If your student was not able to purchase a book during that time you can always head over to our classroom scholastic page and purchase books there! Our deadline for November is fast approaching! Writing: We focused on being independent writers. This week students focused on planning and writing across three or more pages and adding pictures, words, and labels. In addition to using a checklist to check our writing. I am so proud of their hard work on this, they are so very creative! Math: We started our second module this week! This new module is focused on shapes. So far we have talked about sorting shapes with a curve or without a curve as well as identifying and describing rectangles and triangles. We are continuing to work on writing our numbers to 10 and being fluent with adding to make 5. Counselor: Ms. Bryant came in and talked with us about being grateful. Together we made gratitude wands where we found things around our classroom that we were grateful for. Science: We were so lucky to have someone from Science to Go to come and teach us about plants and animals. Students got to explore different artifacts from animals and plants such as: bones and shells! Students very much enjoyed this exploration of artifacts! Upcoming Events: - Friendship Feast: We will be hosting Mrs. Fisher's class on Wednesday! We are so excited to celebrate all that we are thankful and grateful for. - Tuesday December 3rd: Vision and Hearing Testing. - Thursday and Friday (28-29): NO SCHOOL - December 4th-5th: Conferences! Please make sure to sign up for a time slot before the sing-up window closes. This is an important time for us to talk about this year and your student. :) There is no school for students both of these days. Hi Families,
Reading: This week we continued working on identifying and producing rhyming words. In addition, we worked on tapping and saying exact words in the storybooks that we love to read. Writing: We worked on adding pictures, words, and labels to our writing. We used checklists to review our writing and figure out what we needed to work on. Math: We finished our first math module this week! This week we focused on continuing to build our understanding of one more or one less. We will be starting our second math module this week, it will focus on working with and identifying 2D and 3D shapes. Technology: We started using our Dash Robots this week! Students worked in groups of 4 to program their robot. I was so impressed by how well they worked together and how they worked to debug any problems that went arise. Counselor: Ms. Bryant talked with us this week about what we loved about ourselves. Other News: Book Fair: We will be attending the Scholastic Maple Hills Book Fair this Friday (November 22 from 9:30-10:00)! It is so much fun and we have some things in place to make shopping a truly joyful experience! If you are available to help students shop, we would be grateful! -The Book Fair will be in the Portable behind the school this year. This is new. -The Book Fair will be next week Nov. 18-22 before and after school. -This is the only time our students will shop during school. If you are volunteering and would like to take your child during school, the best time is recess 10:40-11:00 or 12:10-12:20. -If you would like your child to shop, please send in an envelope, labeled with your child's name with cash (no checks please). -Please do not send more that $20.00. We will do our best to help the kids shop. PLEASE know that their are small toys and posters as well as books for sale. If you would like more direct supervision of your child's shopping please consider shopping with your child before or after school. Book Bags: Book bags were sent out on Friday. We went over the expectations and procedures for using book bags. Please send book bags back when your student has either mastered or memorized their books. At the end of the year I will send out an email for when book bags need to be returned. Friendship Feast: We will be having our Friendship Feast with Mrs. Fisher's class on November 27th! Mrs. Fisher and I will be providing the "feast" (popcorn and candy corn) that we will share with each other. Please let me know if this is something that your students cannot have. Conferences: Conferences are December 4th and 5th. Please make sure that you have signed up for us to meet, as this is the only time this year where we get to have a formal time to talk. Hi Families,
I hope you all have had a wonderful weekend. This last week was pretty busy for us. We finished up the CogAT testing on Thursday, I am very proud of how hard they worked during the testing period. I know that it takes a lot of work and concentration, and they all did a wonderful job. This week we also focused on Veteran's Day. On Friday we had our Veteran's Day Assembly where we were able to celebrate Veteran's Day and thank Veterans for their service. Leading up to this event we talked about who Veterans are, what they did and the different branches of the military. Students focused on their writing this week and wrote a letter to a Veteran, thanking them for their service. It was a very special day to celebrate all of the men and women who have served our country. Updates/ Upcoming Events:
|
DetailsThis is where I will post our weekly newsletter. |