What a fun week we had! The students are really starting to understand how kindergarten goes and are working together as a class to listen and follow the routines of kindergarten that support our learning. Last week, we continued to talk about what kind, safe and fair students look like, and continued to practice how we can move quickly, quietly and safely from one learning activity to the other. Since the beginning of school, we have cut our time coming to our learning carpet from 20 seconds to 12 seconds! We also had our first fire drill and our first school-wide assembly. Before trying these things for the first time, we talked about what the expectations were and practiced them. During the fire drill, we all moved quickly, quietly and safely from our classroom to our spot outside next to the fence. We waited without talking until we got the all clear signal from Ms. Roy. After the drill, Ms. Roy came to our class to thank us for being so quick, quiet and safe. Before going to the assembly on Thursday afternoon, how talked about how we listen the same way at assemblies that we do in our classroom ~ with still bodies, voices off an and engaged brains that focus our eyes on the speaker and help our ears listen. | When Ms. Roy walked out on the stage, every student showed her what expert kindergarten listeners they were! |
Getting To Know What They Know...
Over the past few weeks, I have been assessing your children to see what they already know. As we discussed in our August family connection meeting, I am using the WA Kids assessment to capture their kindergarten entrance skills in the areas of: Social-Emotional, Physical, Language, Cognitive, Literacy and Math. For a more detailed list of the skills within each of these areas that I am assessing, click the button below.
I expect my students to be at different places with their progress in these areas. One of the most important messages we strive to communicate as K teachers is that learners learn different things at different times, and that this is ok. Every year, students enter K with different levels of academic understanding and will continue to progress through their learning at a variety of paces. Kindergarteners grow in so many directions, and our goal is to nurture the direction each child is growing in and celebrate each new learning success.
To support your child at home, talk to him or her about what they already know and what they think they need to work on. If they are not yet able to identify all of their upper and lowercase letters, identify the letters they do know and celebrate them. Then make flash cards of the letters they do not yet know and play games that help them learn these letters. If they are not yet able to identify all of their letter sounds, again, identify those sounds they do know, celebrate this learning, and then let them study the letters they do not yet know on a program like Starfall (www.starfall.com) while you are getting dinner ready. If your child is resistant to taking about letters at home, don't push them. My advice for any academic support at home is to only do it if it is fun for your student. If talking about letters is not fun, find a literacy activity that is, like reading to your student or acting out books they love. We will continue to work on all of these things at school as well!
To support your child at home, talk to him or her about what they already know and what they think they need to work on. If they are not yet able to identify all of their upper and lowercase letters, identify the letters they do know and celebrate them. Then make flash cards of the letters they do not yet know and play games that help them learn these letters. If they are not yet able to identify all of their letter sounds, again, identify those sounds they do know, celebrate this learning, and then let them study the letters they do not yet know on a program like Starfall (www.starfall.com) while you are getting dinner ready. If your child is resistant to taking about letters at home, don't push them. My advice for any academic support at home is to only do it if it is fun for your student. If talking about letters is not fun, find a literacy activity that is, like reading to your student or acting out books they love. We will continue to work on all of these things at school as well!
MAP Testing This Week!
This Tuesday and Thursday, the students will take their first MAP tests. The MAP test, which stands for Measures of Academic Progress, is a nationally administered adaptable assessment that measures student growth and achievement in Math and Reading. (For more info go to http://www.nwea.org.) Because the test is adaptive (increases difficulty when the student answers correctly) it often can be challenging for students. I make sure to tell there will be questions they do not know, and that that is ok! I give them the message ~ try your hardest, but don't worry about anything you don't know! Please do make sure they eat a good breakfast and have plenty of rest before school on these days.
At your conference in November, we will review all of your student's assessment data and talk about how you can support your student's academic progress at home.
At your conference in November, we will review all of your student's assessment data and talk about how you can support your student's academic progress at home.
Learning Kelso's Choices
Making Our Calm Body Spot Our Own!This week, we decided that we would combine several of our ideas to decorate our calm body spot, making the bottom of it look like underwater with a treasure boat and sea creatures and seashells (and even Shark Boy and Lava Girl), and making the top of it look like outer space. We worked together to make a model of the planets to hang over the area, making sure everyone had a turn to help paint. We hoped to put the planets on their sticks by Friday and complete our plans for the top outer space area, but ran out of time and will work on this on Monday! On Friday, we decided to focus on making the undersea bottom section, and had an amazingly creative decorating session. It was so great to see the kids so excited, collaborating with each other about how they each would create contributions to this class project. Already, I am so impressed with this group's ability to work together, kindly and patiently solving problems that come up and producing great things! | Jog-A-Thon Fun!What a great time we all had at the Jog-A-Thon! Before heading out to run, we talked about working hard and having fun. We set personal goals for our running/walking and talked about how we were not competing with anyone but just working on doing our best. After putting on our awesome t-shirts, we headed out to run. And wow, did we run! I was so impressed by the positive energy and effort our kids brought to this event! They showed us that they can be brave (this event is a bit overwhelming for many of our little learners) and that they can work hard and persevere. They encouraged each other and tried their hardest and had fun! Good stuff! Thank you, family members, who were there to support us! If you have photos to share, please send them my way so that I can post them. I was so busy trying to keep up with the kids, I only took one. |
PE, Art and Library Classes | Friend of the Week! |
Thanks again for reading! I look forward to seeing you all at Curriculum Night this coming Thursday, October 6th from 6:30 - 8:00 pm.
~ Katie