Mrs. McGowan

- I can not stress enough how important it is that your child is reading every day at home. I am trying to encourage the children to take more responsibility for their homework.  Each night when your child reads their books from their book bag to you please sign off on their reading log.  Once your child has filled up an entire reading log I will allow them to go to the treasure box.  The only way they will become a better reader is to practice, practice, practice.



For the week of February 1st- 5th

Language Arts:
This week we in open court we practiced detecting beginning and ending sounds in words, rhyming, blending and replacing vowels to make new words.  We also reviewed the letters Ee, Cc and Bb.  When we learn a new letter we also play a game called the silly sentence game.  The children try to say a sentence using as many words that begin with the letter of the day.  Everyone enjoys this game and we have many laughs.  An example of a silly sentence that was used this week for the letter Cc was Caleb, Cami and Cameron like to eat carrots that are cooked. We will continue to work on building phonemic awareness through fun games and repeated practice. 

To help reinforce comprehension skills I continue to read books aloud to the children as I read a story the children write questions they have about the story on post-its.  The children then posted their question on the board.  Each child is given an opportunity to share their question.  As a class we made sure that it is a question first then we tried to answer the question.  The children have to either find evidence in the book to support their answer or they had to explain why we can infer the answer from the text.  We will continue to use questioning throughout the year.  You could also practice questioning at home when you read.  Another way we work on comprehension during the week is by making connections to the stories we read.  I'm teaching the children that there are many ways to make connections to books.  This week we focused on making personal connection and text to text connection.

This week I introduced the word family an to the children.  I read the poem A Happy Clan.  In this poem there were many words that the children were curious about it also had many words that rhymed.  Each week I will introduce a new poem with a different word family.  The children will practice finding the word family in the poem.  The children will also make word ladders using the word family.  On a word ladder the children  list as many words as they can using the given word family.




Writing:
The story starter we worked on this week was I went to...  I have seen an improvement in everyones writing.  A song we are now singing to help the children remember what they need to have in their stories is called I've go the whole story in my hand.  This song is sung to the tune of He's got the whole world in his hands. 
I've got the whole story in my hand,
I've got the whole story in my hand,
I've got the whole story in my hand,
I've got the whole story in my hand,
I've got the who, what, when, where, why.

The children had an opportunity to write in their squiggle notebooks this week.  It is wonderful to see all the creativity sentences and pictures that come from one little squiggle 
On Thursday the children were given a three page book and asked to write a story.  We practiced touching each page and saying what we were planning on writing on that page.  Each week I will give the children three papers stapled together and ask them to do this.  Each day I will conference with students to help them begin the editing process.  I am encouraging the children to write about what they know.  They can use a story starter and tell about something that has happened to them.  Please continue to practice writing at home.  Remind your child to leave spaced between their words.




Math:
In math we are focusing on measurement. At the beginning of the week we reviewed measuring area and length.  We also made a graph comparing the information we gathered last week about the length of our shoes.  After making our graph the children answered questions about the graph.

Later in the week we learned about measuring and comparing weight.  The children worked in partners and used balance scales to measure the weight of a rock.  I kindergarten we are not learning about units of measurement like pounds, ounces, centimeters or inches.  Instead we use bear counters to measure weight and unifix cubes or other blocks to measure area and length. 
Math stations start again Monday, February 8th.  Please sign up on www.volunteerspot.com if you would like to help.




Unit of Inquiry:
On Monday I introduced our new unit of inquiry How we Organize Ourselves.  Through this unit we will be learning about wants and needs and systems that are in place to help us in our community.  To start the unit I asked the children what a want is and what a need is.  There were many interesting answers.  I wrote down what each child thought they knew about wants and needs and we will use this through out our unit to see if what we thought was correct or was it a misconception.  As the week went on I read many books to the children about wants and needs.  We also watched a united streaming video about the difference in a want and a need.

I will be sending home a note in a few days asking for parent volunteers to share their jobs with our class.  In this unit the children will learn about jobs that are around us and how the jobs help us with our wants and needs.  Please be thinking about this an if you would like to share your job with our class.  I will be sending an outline home later letting you know what information about your job would be helpful for you to share with the children.