Our Final Full Week

This last full week of kindergarten will find our class busy finishing up various lessons and introducing some new ones. We have six more groups of rhyming words to add to our Word Family Books before they go home at the end of this week. That will make a total of 30 word families that we have introduced. Understanding the similar letter patterns in each of these families will help the children as they are developing their literacy skills to read and spell so many more words. If a child is able to phonetically read and spell the word "ball", they will be able to read and spell "wall" and "tall", also.

New topics to be explored this week will be the concept of opposites. We will have fun writing stories that include a pair of opposites. We will find out about three dimensional shapes, such as cubes and spheres, and ways to build three dimensional structures with of straws and twist ties, and with toothpicks and gumdrops. The class will have fun with these activities.

Next Tuesday is our End of the Year Party. All morning we will be rotating through the three kindergarten classes for a variety of activities planned by our Room Representatives and teachers. In the afternoon the children will go shopping in the kindergarten store in our K common area. They will spend the money they have earned for their school piggy banks. Also, that afternoon our class will celebrate the the birthdays of the children who have summer birthdays or who have not already celebrated with our class.

How busy, fun, and rewarding these last days will be!

Where Has the Time Gone?

With only a few days left of school, we are starting to have closure with some of our lessons and activities.

In handwriting we finished the lessons in the workbooks on upper and lower case letter formation, as well as the numeral 0-9. The children are checking their books to complete any page they may have missed. These workbooks will then we taken home to be reviewed over the summer. Next the children are learning to print their first, middle , and last names using the correct letter formation. What a challenge for some with long names and those with nicknames. Alex is learning to spell Alexander and Cate, Catherine. But Aurora is the winner with a total of 25 letters in her complete name!

This week will we be studying the last alphabet letter for our personal dictionaries. We will be searching books looking for words with the letter "x" either in the middle or at end of words to add to our individual books. Then we will look through our books to find letter pages to complete. After that, the dictionaries will be added to our Bag of Books.

The class will continue to write poetry in Writer's Workshop, as well as letters to people around campus and to our friends and relatives. How about encouraging letter writing at home over the summer. If your child writes to me over the summer, I will write back.

We are researching insects and bugs. Each student has selected a bug to research and then write factual report about that creature.

In reading we continue to "book shop" each Monday for five new "just right" books to read for the next week. We practice by ourselves, with partners, and with the teachers and visiting adults. We are learning to think about what we read and then answer questions about each story.

Math work continues with two dimenional patterns, numbers to 100 and above, and base ten (building numbers using sets of tens and ones.) We will also learn about halves and whole, solid shapes, and vertical addition.

Today is the 164th day of school and although we have selected photos and work samples for our portfolios, there is much learning that continues.

Word Families

Skilled readers recognize patterns in words. Word families allow children to practice rhyme and chunk letters with stable vowel sounds. Readers can also decode by analogy-use. What they know about one word can be used to decode another. If a reader knows the word tack they are likely to know other words in the -ack family such as snack or jack. With the understanding of how words are related, a student's reading and spelling vocabulary in greatly increased.

All year our children have been learning about word families. We have been practicing reading and spelling them in our Word Family books. To date we have introduced 25 word families and have several more to add to our collection. We started with the -at family last fall, working with common words like cat and bat. Today we were working with the -ug family using words like mug and slug to create silly sentences. (The big slug sat in a mug next to the rug.) The students did a great job and seemed to enjoy the challenge of making up these little poems.

More work with word families will continue and be expanded upon both for the rest of kindergarten and in first grade next year.

Classroom News

Have something to share, show, and tell? Each morning our students have the opportunity to write their own headlines. This form of writing incorporates sentence structure, summarization, and spelling.
Later in the day, those who have written their messages read their news to the class. This offers the children practice with rereading their own writing, public speaking, and holds them accountable for correctness of word wall words.
They truly enjoy their moment to share and answer questions. We have learned so much about each child by listening to what is important to them. The classroom news makes for great dinner conversation. Ask who reported today!

Presenting our Animal Facts

Initially our discussions helped us craft a driving question of "What can I teach others about animals that live in the zoo?" Our Lowry Park Zoo visit served as field work to kick off our projects on zoo animals. Each child was asked to choose their favorite animal to research. Although, investigations continue both in our classroom, the library, and on the computer, next Monday, May 2nd, each child will share an unusual fact during the 8:10 Town Meeting. We would love to have you join us as each child presents their individual teaching poster accompanied by their non-fiction writing.

Writing Letters to Other People

In addition to writing our Small Moments stories, we have begun a unit on letter writing. Two weeks ago we wrote thank you letters to our P.E. coaches for organizing field day for the lower division students. The coaches were very pleased to receive our letters and complimented us on doing such great job. Last week we wrote to the Morean Art Center thanking them for our interesting trip to their museum. We received an email of appreciation for our thoughtfulness.

Today we will two more letters, thanking our visiting artists who helped make the Celebrate the Arts day so special. Mrs. O'Mullane, second grade teacher here at Shorecrest, presented an interesting introduction to using our bodies to dance in many fun ways. This was followed by Mr. Rim Carnivicus, an opera singer, who explained about opera. He demonstrated various opera characteristics, such as high and low sounds, and loud and soft ones. We watched a cute Bugs Bunny cartoon which was done in an operatic style.

At other times we will write letters to Dr. Bianco asking her questions or commenting on different areas. Writing letters to friends here at school and to our parents will be fun, too.

Copies are made of all the letters that we are writing so they can be bound together for individual books for each student. We are talking about the various purposes of writing letters and the different components of a letter.

How about encouraging your child at home to write letters to family and friends that live far away?

Meet Our New Student!

Alissa Simkin joined our class today , coming from Jamerson Elementary School in St. Petersburg. We are excited to have another girl in our classroom. Now we have ten boys and nine girls. We had fun interviewing Alissa and learning lots about her. Her favorite food is pasta, and apples are her favorite fruit. She like ballet and to go swimming. She has a pet hamster. At school she likes art and to draw pictures. Alissa's favorite flowers are daisies, and she likes the colors pink, purple, and blue. Alissa is very outgoing and excited to be at Shorecrest. She lives in Clearwater and speaks both English and Russian at home. Welcome to Shorecrest, Alissa and her family!