Reading buddies

We met with Ms Davidson's Kindergarten friends today. It is always fun to share our books with our friends.

Reading

We are so excited about reading in our classroom. We just started our new author study and we are reading books written by Kate DiCamillo now. We started with the Mercy Watson series. Since we are reading books in a series, we brought in some other good options for kids to read at school too. We have Frog and Road. Mr. Putter and Ming and Ling, to name a few. Ask your child what he/she likes to read.

Family Newsletter

Dear Families,
We had another terrific week together on Harmony.  We would like to welcome our new friend Jonah to our class and team!  It is great to have you in our class.  The students are so excited to have a new friend. Thank you for being so kind and welcoming.

This will be a short update because I recently posted and will see you next week for our conferences, but I wanted to take this opportunity to inform you of the following things:

100 Mile Club:
Ms. Porter started her early morning open gym for walking and jogging.  The gym is open to any student who wishes to participate and earn points towards the 100 mile goal.  Please check in with her Monday-Friday between 7:30-7:50am. Sneakers are required.

Volunteers:
I am looking for volunteers to come and help us out in our classroom.  If you are interested, please email me. In the past, I have had parents help out in all different capacities.  Some parents prefer to help out with projects from home, while others can commit to a weekly visit into our classroom to support in reading, writing, or math.  Please let me know what you are interested in doing and we will make it work.  Thank you for considering.

Picture Re-takes:
School picture re-takes are scheduled for Wednesday, October 26th between 8-9am.  If you have specific questions, please contact the front office.

I hope you and your family will have a great weekend.  I look forward to seeing you next week for our parent-teacher conferences.  Remember, your child is more than welcome to attend.

Regards,
Maria

Family Newsletter

Dear Families,
Last week certainly went by fast!  With an evacuation drill and a field-trip to Mt. Philo, the week just slipped by.  I hope you had a chance to check out the pictures I posted from our field-trip.  Simply scroll down to see them.  We had a great day together and the weather was beautiful.  Thank you parents for coming along.

Writing:
The students love to write!  We are finishing up our beginning unit in writer's workshop in which the students explore the different reasons writers write.  The students wrote about themselves, explored free choice stories and personal narratives and wrote about strong feelings.  They also wrote about our scientific explorations and investigations. Throughout this writing unit, we also used different mentor texts to guide our writing and to get ideas for how to express ourselves. Our next unit in writing will be on personal narratives, which we call "small moment stories." The students will learn to expand on their language and zoom in on a moment in time in an effort to add more details in their words and pictures.  We look forward to sharing our writing with you during the conferences next week.

Reading:
Guided reading groups are continuing in our classroom.  This is a time when the students meet in small groups to share a book on their instructional level.  Each group will work on various comprehension and vocabulary skills. We also talk about specific strategies to decode and understand the text on the word/sentence level.  We ended our initial unit on David McKee's Elmer books with a "Brown Bag Book Share" yesterday.  The student shared their understanding of the characters and problems/solutions in the books while eating popcorn and reading books together.  Our upcoming unit in reading will continue on the importance of active engagement in reading and how readers share their understanding of books in different ways.  We will  learn more about how readers share their books in writing and online.

Parent-Teacher Conferences:
If you and your family did not sign up for a conference for next week, please do so.  I sent out a link to the google doc we use.  Please let me know if you need assistance to sign up or if the times do not work for you and your family.  Your child is encouraged to attend.  We will share all the learning taking place here at school and you will have the opportunity to look at your child's writing and scrapbook.

Upcoming Events and Reminders:

• There is no school tomorrow, Wednesday October 12th.
• Parent teacher conferences are next week, October 17-21.  We have regular school Monday-Thursday.  There is no school for students on Friday, October 21st due to these conferences.
• Please remember to send your child to school with warm clothing each day!  It is getting chilly outside and we have outdoor recess every day!  Thank you.

Mt Philo trip

We had a great day together hiking Mt Philo. Thank you to all of our chaperones.

Pumpkin science

Today, we had a family donate pumpkins for our class. Thank you.
We acted like scientists, and carefully observed their individual characteristics. We asked ourselves the question "are all pumpkins the same?"
Ask your child to explain what we learned.

Art project with Ms Rodgers

Last week, Ms Rodgers joined our class. She read a book about an artist who decided to beautify his old neighborhood by painting large murals. Just like the character in the book, we also painted a mural. Our mural hangs in the ABS hallway. Please visit our school to see it.