Classroom News

February may be a short month, but it sure has been busy!  Between Global School Play Day, the snow, the 100th day of school, and Valentine's Day, K-1 has been full of fun!

Global School Play Day

Schools all over the world came together to celebrate the benefits of unstructured play in children's lives.  As you can see from the pictures, it was a huge success!

100th Day of School

Can you believe we have been in kindergarten for over 100 days now?  We had such a great time doing many activities centering around the number 100.  Making gumball machines, writing about what we would do with $100, playing Race to 100, and sharing our collections made our day extra fun!

Valentine's Day

A very special thank you goes to all of our parent volunteers for helping us have a great Valentine's Day party:  Mrs. Sluder, Mrs. Kubow, Mrs. Pellum, Mrs. Stuckey, Mrs. Limbers, Mrs. Leiper, and Mrs. Brancato.  Take a look at the video below for pictures of all of our fun!

Valentine's Day from Heather Coyle on Vimeo.

Reading
We are wrapping up our nonfiction unit.  I have been so impressed with the observations, discussions, and sharing that I have been seeing.  These readers have become quite the experts at finding nonfiction text features such as bold words, table of contents, labels, a glossary, and an index.  During independent reading time, I see the students constantly stop and think as they share new information or facts that they already knew that were confirmed by their reading.  After spring break, we will start a poetry unit.

Please remember keep guided reading books in the blue book bag, as this will help the students be ready when I call their group on any given day.  When they meet with me for a new lesson, I will collect the old book and they will bring home a new book.  Thank you so much for your support with this at home!

Writing
The kindergarten authors continue to do a great job during Writing Workshop.  They are becoming quite the experts at our 4 steps:  Think, Draw, Label, and Write.  Recently, we began adding another part to our writing.  Students are now working to write extend their idea by writing more than one sentence.  I was so proud of the hard work and effort I was seeing with this challenging task.  We will continue to work on writing sentences with a capital letter at the beginning, a period at the end, and spaces between each word. 

Math
The students are loving learning about shapes!  They did a great job identifying and describing the following solid (3-D) shapes:  sphere, cylinder, cone, pyramid, and cube.  It was exciting to hear them using the new math vocabulary words including faces, edges, and corners.  This week, we began learning more about the flat (2-D) shapes:  circle, square, rectangle, triangle, and hexagon.  Students were able to find and trace these flat shapes within the solid shapes.  We also went on shape hunts to find these flat shapes within our classroom.  It was so fun to use iPads and QR codes to find real-life examples of these shapes and graph the ones that were found.  

Social Studies
This week, we focused on President's Day and George Washington, which tied nicely into our nonfiction unit.  We read a biography about George Washington and made an art project, which will be displayed in the hallway.  In the LMC this week, the students were able to extend their learning about this important president by watching a Brainpop Jr. video and playing with interactive website on the computers.  

LMC
During our LMC time, the students were able to learn more about the Winter Olympics by going on a QR code hunt with the iPads.  Each time they scanned a code, they were able to learn fun facts and see highlights about the different winter olympic events.

Me Bags
We continue to love learning about our friends!  We learned that Gracen loves dinosaurs, painting, and reading I Spy books!

We learned that Sonny loves sharks, Legos, and learning about weather, especially tornados!

We learned that Charlie loves soccer, Nerf guns, and reading Magic Tree House books!  Special thanks to Mrs. Pellum for being our Guest Reader and reading the sweet story, A Puppy for Annie.

Classroom News

It is hard to believe we are approaching the 100th day of kindergarten!  It is amazing to see the growth that each one of the students has made during this time.  I cannot wait to see the progress throughout the rest of the year!  Read on to see what we have been up to in K-1.

Reading Workshop
The students are continuing to do a great job during our nonfiction unit.  They are beginning to learn about the different nonfiction text features, such as a table of contents, index, glossary, bold print, photographs, and captions.  

The students are also learning how important it is to stop, think, and wonder while reading nonfiction books.  While reading the book, I See a Kookaburra, it was great to see all of the questions the students were able to generate while learning about animals that live in different habitats.

The students were also introduced to biographies as we read the book, Me . . . Jane about the childhood of Dr. Jane Goodall.  While reading this, we learned that nonfiction books do not always have to have photographs in order to be considered nonfiction.  Literary nonfiction books can tell a true story while having illustrations, which we enjoyed while learning about Dr. Goodall!

Guided Reading
Hopefully, you saw the note in your child's Take Home Folder that we began guided reading groups this week.  During guided reading group time, students are matched with books at their appropriate instructional level and we work on a variety of reading strategies and word work activities, depending on the needs of each group.  After meeting with me, students place their book in their blue book bag to take home.  The letter that was sent home gives many tips and ideas for ways to have students read this book at home.  Please keep this book in the book bag, as this will help the students be ready when I call their group on any given day.  When they meet with me for a new lesson, I will collect the old book and they will bring home a new book.  Thank you so much for your support with this at home.  I can't wait to see the students continue to grow as readers!

While I am meeting with students in small groups during our guided reading time, the students are working independently on a variety of literacy and math activities.  Once they are finished, it is time for dessert!  Each table has a special "dessert bin" that has a hands-on activity in it that focuses on literacy, math, fine motor skills, or creative thinking and/or building skills.  These bins rotate frequently so each table has a chance to complete each activity. 

Math
We have completed Chapter 6, which focused on numbers 0-20.  I was quite impressed with the number sense development I saw throughout this chapter.  Students are becoming more comfortable writing and comparing numbers, while also using vocabulary such as fewer, greater than, and less than.  They are able to put numbers in the correct order and explain the reasoning behind it, which is wonderful to see!

We will begin Chapter 7:  Solid and Flat Shapes on Monday.  In this chapter, students will learn to recognize and name solid and flat shapes through the number of faces, corners, and edges, and if they have straight sides or curved outlines.  Students will also learn to extend and create shape patterns.  Knowing the basic properties of two and three-dimensional shapes is the first step to understanding geometry.  

Although many of us weren't happy to see that the groundhog saw his shadow today, the students enjoyed playing a groundhog-themed math game called Race to 20.  

Zones of Regulation
Our latest social and emotional learning lesson focused on the size of problems that students may encounter.  We discussed that tiny and little problems are problems that only affect one or two people and can be ignored or solved quickly.  Medium problems are problems that some people may share and can be solved in an hour to a couple of days.  These problems may also require a grown-up to help.  Big and huge problems are problems that many people share and they don't always have an easy, quick, or pleasant solution.  

We then spent some time looking at examples of different problems and sorting them correctly, which resulted in some great conversations between the students.  The most important lesson we learned is that the size of our reaction should match the size of our problem, which is sometimes tricky for kindergarteners.  This common language that we are using will help make this skill easier for students to understand and apply.  Last, we read the story, You Get What You Get.  In this story, Melvin sometimes has trouble matching his reaction to the size of his problem.  

Art Appreciation
We were thrilled to have Mrs. Pellum join us for another Art Appreciation lesson.  We learned about the artist, Mary Cassatt.  Through the paintings, "The Child's Bath" and "After the Bath", we learned how Mary Cassatt's paintings showed how people can take care of others and show that they love someone.  Students then had a chance to draw a picture of how someone helps to take care of them.  Some students even wrote a special message on their drawings to give to their loved ones as an early valentine!

Me Bags and Guest Readers
We loved learning about Camden and seeing him share his super special stuffed animal with us!  

Camden's mom was our Guest Reader and shared the book, My Adventures with Cars, which even had Camden as one of the characters!

Andreas had a chance to share his Me Bag and share his special stuffed animal too!

We loved having Andreas's mom and brother join us for the fun Valentine's Day story, Love, Splat!

A Few Reminders

• Please make sure your child is dressed appropriately for the weather.  Hats and gloves should be brought to school each day, but especially on Wednesdays and Thursdays when we go to recess.
• The 100th Day of school will be on Friday, February 9.  You should have received a letter and empty water bottle explaining the collection your child can bring to school.  Please send these to school no later than Thursday, February 8.
• Our class Valentine's Day party will be held on Tuesday, February 14.  If you need another copy of the letter that was sent home with information about passing out valentines, please let me know.  
• Parent/Teacher conferences will be scheduled soon.  If you have not yet filled out your conference preference form, please do so no later than Wednesday, February 7.  The link to the form can be found here:   PARENT/TEACHER CONFERENCE TIME PREFERENCE

Have a wonderful weekend!