Ms. J's Kindergarten Class: Happy October!

What are we learning?

READING
We are continuing to work on an alphabet letter for each day. We are more than halfway through!

We've been singing the Aphardy song to help us learn our letter sounds. Feel free to use the link below and sing it at home! The more exposure, the better. :)
Aphardy Letter Sounds Song
Vowel Bat Song

Reading Units of Study (Our reading curriculum)
We are continuing to practice reading books three different ways: 1) Reading the pictures. 2) Reading the words (if you know any). 3) Re-reading it and re-telling the story in your own words.

Here is Ella re-telling a story of the Three Little Pigs in movie form. It was so cool hearing different students' interpretations!

The class learned how to read books with a buddy. We say: "Elbow to elbow, knee to knee. I read to you and you read to me. Elbow to elbow, knee to knee. Book in the middle so we can both see." We are making sure to look at the title and cover of a book first to see what what we notice about it BEFORE we read through the pages. We are learning to make connections that the book's front cover is connected to the pages inside. For example, if a book has dinosaurs on the front, the pages inside will most likely be about dinosaurs. It is so fun to see classmates laughing and enjoying their books together; buddy reading is another way to read a book!

Each student starting using their book bins! We get to "shop" for books every day (we get to pick out 4 books from the bins) and put them in our bins until it's time for reading. I told the class to be mindful of the books that they shop for; pick books that look interesting to you or where you want to learn and find out more information on a topic. We've been taking out our book bins to read during rest time.

Sight Words: can, see
We've been learning sight words already! I plan on introducing 2 words a week. Your child should know at least 10 words by the end of Quarter 1. We have student readers with our sight words in the text. We've been working on pointing to each word as we read and using pictures to help us figure out unknown words.

Here we are working on the sight word SEE.

Word Sorts
We use word sorts in kindergarten. Students cut out pictures and eventually letters and words and figure out how to sort them. We eventually glue our sorts into our Word Sorts notebook!

Our first word sort was fruits vs. not fruits

Math Expressions (Our math curriculum)
We do calendar every day where we go over the days of the week, months of the year, date, and how many days we've been in school. I have a different math helper for the day. We also do "Flashing Fingers" where I say a number and they have to show me it quickly using their fingers. We've been working on showing numbers 0-5.

We started using our student math books. Our first page was drawing pictures to represent a number. We are also learning how to properly write numbers. Look out for math homework this week!

We're learning how to use graphs to show data and how to interpret the data by using the words most, least, tie.

Other Odds & Ends
We had our first Blue and Gold Day/All School Meeting where all the grades meet in the gym and have a morning meeting together. We say the Pledge, do our school cheer, sing the birthday song to any students who had birthdays last month and this month, and listen to any special news that's going on in our school.

Our friend Sophie got to represent our classroom!

Second Step started in our classroom. This is where our school social worker, Mrs. Lowry comes in and teaches the class about self control, respect, and conflict management.

We are enjoying our different stations at playtime. I opened a new one last week: the reading station. I plan on introducing a few more as the weeks go on!

School Expectations

We show Respect, Responsibility, and Safety at school. We've been going over these three key words at school since Day 1. I've been taking photos of students in action so they can refer to them if they forget what respect, responsibility, or safety is.