Ms. J's Kindergarten Class: New Year, New Beginnings 2015

I'll admit it: I was VERY anxious to start on Monday since the students and I have been basking in relaxation for two whole weeks. However, our first week back at school went very well! It was so much fun to see everyone again (I missed my students!) and hear stories about how they spent their holiday. The class was able to write in their journals about things they did over break. Then they shared it with a partner.

To celebrate the new year, I had the class think about goals they want to set for themselves in their reading. We brainstormed different ideas, such as being able to read for a long period of time, sound out bigger words, and make our voice sound like the characters in our book. We posted our "New Years' Reading Resolutions" on the wall to help remind ourselves of them as we continue to practice our reading superpowers!

I want to pop the first letter sound.

I want to read for a long time.

I want to sound like the characters.

I want to get better at vowel sounds.

I want to sound out big words.

I want to read books with more words.

I want to read more books.

One of the reading superpowers that was introduced last week focused on what to do if you come to a tricky word in your book. Instead of saying, "Help me!"and having someone else tell you what the word is, kindergartners can use the picture and letters in that word to help them. They can also use the word wall (we have three of them in our room for readers to refer to!) to see if they recognize any of the words. It is easy and convenient to just tell children the word ourselves, but it is a detriment to them since they are NOT learning how to figure out the tricky word themselves. Practice these word solving strategies at home and your child will start to gain confidence in themselves when they get stumped!

In math, the class learned about making groups of 5 to represent a number. It's a faster, more organized way of counting to a number rather than just putting objects into a pile and counting by 1s. We also learned about making partners of a number. More to come on that next week!

In science, we learned about an ice city in China and read an article in Scholastic's Let's Find Out. We will be exploring more about ice and how it is formed later this week.

I am starting to focus more on handwriting and the proper ways of forming individual letters. As writers, we need to start "high in the sky, then go down to the ground." Many times, kindergartners start their letters the opposite way (going from the bottom to the top) or get their letters reversed (this is developmental up through first grade). My goal is to focus on letter formation and to have students' writing be neater and more legible. We have been working on our handwriting at the carpet using whiteboards. I found this handwriting game on http://www.turtlediary.com/kids-games/ela-topics/writing-games.html and have focused on only lowercase letters. We do a couple letters each day. We will eventually practice uppercase letters once lowercase is finished. The reason why I chose lowercase first is because many kindergarten students learned capital letters in preschool. When they write, it is a mixture of uppercase AND lowercase letters. I want to teach them proper grammar and that most words we write are in lowercase form. You can emphasize this at home by giving your child opportunities to free write whenever, whether it's on paper, a note pad, or notebook!

Here are a few photos from playtime. I opened up the math station which includes many different math manipulatives like pattern blocks, shapes, counting objects, and connecting cubes. The class loves it!