Mini-Writing Workshop

Hello Families,
I am going to attempt to clarify the process of our writing which I have just added to the activities you can do at home with your learner.  I am including all of the tools provided to me by my school.  The Flagler County Writing Assessment Rubric for Kindergarten is provided in your planner and is used to determine at what stage your child is writing.

     
Your children are emerging writers and it is so very exciting to see them marry what they are thinking on a topic to the letters and sounds they are learning.  The focus in building a critical writer is to provide them with how to construct focus, purpose and a plan to their essays.  That is a mouthful for us as adults to understand and thankfully there is a framework that will help.

The expository frame provided here is from a writing workshop all teachers attended and is currently what we use in class.  I will give a topic we will work on this week in the blog.  The children and I will work on this at school during our Writing block. If you can, help at home.  I will chunk the parts of the framework in to different days.  Constructing the topic sentence (two days), First (reason- two days), Next, (reason -two days), Last (reason- two days), In conclusion (two days).  In your sessions at home, please only take 8 to 15 minutes for each one-on-one meeting.  You can support the children in how to write by using sounds.  Ask your child to s-t-r-e-t-c-h out the word with the charts I sent home. If your house is like mine, I wish you luck in finding that little chart!             

This is a formula, but I am choosing to look at this process of writing from a warmer point of view.  I am tilling the land in showing the foundations of writing with focus, organization, support and conventions.  I will plant these seeds now.  With your help, you will slowly come to see and enjoy the beauty of  your capable writer blossom.
Warmly,
Mrs. C.

p.s. Please follow the blog!  Let me know you are out there, pretty please.

Happy New Year!

Hello Families,
I am sorry it has been so long!!  There are many updates to inform you of with our homework (again?!), available websites for enrichment activities and our schedule.  I will try to keep it brief.
Homework will not be checked or graded and is for the enrichment of skills taught during the week.
Spelling City can be used to practice high frequency words.  I will send home a letter this week on how you can access your learner's sight words (a.k.a high frequency words and heart words).
Here is a powerpoint you can use to practice sight words as well http://www.slideshare.net/mllc04/storytown-sight-words.
IXL is a math website to be used in addition to our math series.  You will also receive a letter with login and password information for your learner.
If you are completely bored and have nothing to do (ha, ha, ha), you can go to Mr. Maffesoli's Math Common Core Standards to see what your learner is expected to know before they leave Kindergarten.  Thanks to his hard work, you can even do activities that correlate to the standard.
The common core Writing standard I would like to focus on for homework is W.K.1 which says your learner will use a combination of drawing, dictating and writing to compose informative (we say expository) texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic.  The framework we use is a topic sentence, for example, "My favorite book is The Wizard of Oz for three reasons.  Then we use transitional phrases first, next, last and in conclusion to form our explanation.  I will send home a copy of the framework and the rubric used to assess your learner's progress.  I will also write in the planner the topic we are working on each week so that you can help them write at home.  Please be sure to let your learner sound out each word they attempt to write using the sound charts that went home.  If that is too difficult, they can draw what they are trying to express.
On a lighter note, we are trying to go to the computer lab, every other Tuesday.
Your children have grown so very much in such a short period of time, sometimes it astounds me.  I am so very grateful to be a part of their learning experience.  Thank you for your trust and patience.

If you have any questions at all, please contact me, we are in this together!

Fondly,
Mrs. C.

What's New?

Families,

If you are looking for enrichment activities in Mathematics, you can use the user name and passwords sent home in your child's Daily Folder (please write me a note in the planner if you need another letter with the information).    The activities assigned on the Envisions website will allow you to see a Visual Learning Animation which your child sees every day as we go through the math topics. A link is on our blog for your convenience if you'd like to access the site. Currently, we are in Topic 3, understanding numbers 0 to 5.

Letters with user names and passwords will be available by early next week for our Reading series on Think Central.  The link is also located to the right of your screen under "Helpful Websites".

I look forward to meeting with you soon to talk about your child's progress next week.  

Thank you for staying in close contact with me.  I will continue to strive to keep you abreast of our classroom life.

Warmly,
Mrs. C.

Gingerbread Goodness

I have to admit I had fun with this thematic unit!!  I think the kids did, too.  

Just look at those happy faces!

After reading The Gingerbread Man, we read The Gingerbread Boy to introduce the reading comprehension skill of compare and contrast.  The comparison also lead to talking about vocabulary terms same and different which previews our first math topic of sorting.  Always sneaking in something extra, we found words that had -an in the stories.



The Gingerbread Man arrived to deliver the cookies---long story.  The gingerbread men had escaped from the oven in the cafeteria.  The children took a tour of the school to search for them. Unbeknownst to the children, they were learning  the locations of very important places in our school like the nurse, the principal's office, guidance, and the media center.

Here, the children used gingerbread bears as nonstandard units of measurement with everyday items in our classroom, such as books and bins.

Homework

I am grading assessments and it occurs to me that I would like to try adapting homework to the learner instead of sending home a general, one size fits all packet of worksheets.  This is where being partners in your child's learning will be beneficial.  Each child will have different skills to focus on and I will provide feedback on their progress.  I will use a rubric. Rubrics specify the level of performance expected in an assignment/project.  Along with specific comments provided by me, the use of rubrics will (in time) help your learner judge and revise their own work before handing in an assignment.

4- Perfect score, can’t ask for more.  Look at me, I am a four!

3- Almost perfect, look at me.  Doing great, I am a three.

2- Still much to do, makes me a two.  But I can do it, I’ll show you.

1- I have just begun.  with hard work, I’ll get it done, but for now, I am a one.

Homework will be assigned on a Friday and collected the following Friday. This week, I will send a review of the Math we learned.  Homework will begin in earnest on the week of 9/12.  Let's give this a try.  

"I'm done! Now what do I do?"

I use routines to assist in effective classroom management.  There is a small poster in class above the "All Done" bin that holds completed work.  It has the acronym C.R.O.W.  Next to each letter there is a picture.  I have explained and demonstrated to the children what they can choose to do when they have completed their work.  C- clean up, R- read (the pictures in a book), O- other work, W- write.  The children absolutely amazed me when I saw a couple of them go to the Name Word Wall and begin to write a new friend's name.

The children are learning that reading the pictures is reading.  When they are done, they get a sheet of paper and draw what happened first, next, last (we are working on this, which will be a good segue to expository writing).

One of the kiddos enjoying read to self.

Even at this young age, establishing routines in the classroom help build work and time management skills.  It also helps create an organized and predictable environment where the children can feel safe and secure.

Morning Message

Every morning after the students perform their morning routine activities, they go to the Morning Message Board.  This board displays a message like:  "Good Morning!  Today is Wednesday, August 31, 2011.  Do you think we will find the gingerbread cookies?"  There is a column for yes and no.  The children get to express their opinions to the questions by signing their name.  Other benefits to the morning message include:  demonstrating writing is speech written down, differentiating between a letter, word and a sentence and associating letter and sounds to name a few. I definitely "share the pen"!

I then use the data to sneak in a simple addition sentence.