Weekly News & Homework: January 7th-10th

Happy New Year and welcome back to school! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and fun two weeks off with family and friends!

This is a short week, but we will still have new sight words and letter teams. 

PLEASE MAKE SURE TO READ THE ENTIRE POST AS THERE IS A LOT OF NEW INFORMATION FOR THE NEW YEAR!!

There is no school for students tomorrow Monday, January 6th due to a Teacher Inservice day. There is also no school on Monday, January 20th due to Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Success Academy will resume Tuesday, January 14th and second trimester electives will begin the week of January 13th. 

***Beginning after the holiday break, we will now have each student write his/her first and LAST NAME on all papers, homework, etc.  If your child does not know how to write his/her last name, please practice this at home. We will be practicing at school as well. Each student will now have last names written on their new name tags for support in the classroom.  

***Also beginning after the holiday break each child will have a “wallet” that will live in their backpack. Each day your child will have the opportunity to earn money (plastic coins) throughout our day. Students will have the opportunity to receive pennies, nickels, dimes, and even quarters in the classroom as rewards for behavior and hard work throughout the day. On Fridays students will visit the CLASS STORE! Each student will count money, trade money (example: five pennies for one nickel) and have the opportunity to spend their money on the items that are now “on sale” at the class store. Of course, bigger treasures will cost more money, which I hope will reinforce self-control and teach students about saving. Each child will be responsible for keeping track of their own wallet and for counting the money in it--practice counting money at home!!! (This will be great math practice). The wallet is designed to teach responsibility and accountability as well as reinforce math skills. This is a great life skill your child will benefit from in the future!! Thank you for your continued support. (That being said, if you are able to donate larger prizes for the most expensive class store drawers, that would be wonderful!)

*This week, we will be taking an addition and subtraction pre-test. Our Common Core Standard is that by the end of kindergarten, students will fluently (meaning without fingers or manipulatives) be able to add and subtract within five. Students will have the opportunity to practice these facts and take weekly tests. This week, we will just be taking a pre-test, which will let me know where your child is at with his/her addition/subtraction skills. From there, each student will be on a different level that he or she is working on. The goal by the end of the year is to finish adding and subtracting within 5, and finish the entire page in 2 minutes. The students will be timed for 2 minutes to complete the test, then after the two minutes is up, they will all switch to crayon. You will be able to see what is finished within the 2 minutes by what is completed in pencil. Please remember that we would like all students to master this standard by the end of the year. My hope is that each week, we will accomplish a little bit more on these tests. Please reinforce and practice these skills at home. Thank you for your support!

We will also be taking a pre-test on our addition and subtraction ("operation and algebraic thinking") standards. You will be able to see what is expected to know by the END of the school year and these are the skills we will be working on in class in our addition and subtraction unit. I will also be sending home a checklist of what to work on in order to master these standards by the end of kindergarten. 

Upcoming Events:  

Monday, January 6: NO SCHOOL

Monday, January 20: NO SCHOOL

Friday, January 24: 100th DAY OF SCHOOL CELEBRATION (more info coming soon)

What Are We Learning This Week?:

Sight Words: OF, BACK, SAY, SAYS, PLEASE.

Letter Team:  CK (We are learning that CK makes the K sound and helps the vowel to say it's short sound, like in BACK, NECK, PICK, LOCK, DUCK).

Reading: This week, we will read many books about winter and snowmen. We are also reading "The Mitten" and many other books by Jan Brett. We will discuss and record story elements such as author, illustrator, setting, and characters. 

Writing: This week we will be working on narrative writing-writing about our break in our journals using a topic sentence and many detail/supporting sentences. We will also have fun writing about our favorite winter activities and winter items. 

This month we are learning how to write an opinion piece of writing. Students will practice how to state their opinion based on a writing prompt and give two or three explanations to back their opinion. For example: Which fruit do you think is the best, apples or bananas?  I think apples are the best fruit.  Apples make delicious pies. They are also a quick and healthy snack you can take anywhere without getting smushed.  Apples are also good for gooey caramel apples that are fun to make and eat!   

We will also continue to practice our narrative writing. We will also continue to work on proper penmanship and writing conventions such as periods and correct capitalization.  

Math: We will be taking our addition and subtraction pre-tests this week and working on counting/writing numbers. This month we will begin our addition and subtraction unit, learning various ways to solve addition and subtraction number sentences and word problems. (See above section for more details.) This month we will also begin our math unit on measurement. We are learning different ways things can be measured, including length, height, width, weight, and capacity. You can help by discussing measurement at home.

Leadership: As always, we will continue to ROAR. Students displaying excellent leadership traits will be rewarded with money to spent at our class store. 

Homework: January 6-10 

Flashcards:  Make flashcards for our new sight words (OF, BACK, SAY, SAYS, PLEASE), and letter team (CK).Study flashcards every day.

Phonemic Awareness: Please work with your child on: rhyming, blending, segmenting, syllables, and beginning/middle/ending sounds. 

Reading: Read your book bag every night! This includes Leveled A-Z books, decodables, library books, sight words, and fluency pages.  Continue to read TO your child every night, having conversations about the stories you are reading. Continue to log onto Smarty Ants for 10-15 at least a few times a week. Your child will not have new reading A-Z Leveled Reading books this week but you will find a new fluency reading paper for your child to practice each day.  Please remember to make sure these fluency papers come back to school each day in your child’s book bag. 

Writing: Write in your at-home journal every day. Continue to work with your child on the writing goals they need to master. While we ARE all at different writing goals, the in-class expectation is now that each child will write three or more sentences every day. Please reinforce this at home with writing homework.

Math: Continue to work on number ID, number writing, counting to 100, counting forward and shapes. Please check your daily math page coming home each day for skills that you need to work on. 

QR Codes: Download and print the QR Code practice pages on ParentSquare. Work on these pages together.