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.