Room #11 Kindergarten
Please look through your child's yellow folder EVERYDAY for important information and return it to school EVERYDAY. Homework will include Math Homework, Fundations Homework, Helping Hand Assignments and various class homework assignments. Please look for important information in this yellow communication folder daily. As always, Please let me know if you have any questions or comments!
Willa Bulkley
Helping Hand Task - Conduct a Survey!
Your child will be asked to take a turn being our class Helping Hand for the day, several times throughout the year. The Helping Hand plays an important role in the class. Helping Hands assist students and teachers in many ways in the classroom. They lead the class to specials or to the playground. They help out classmates when they are faced with a problem like cleaning up spilled milk or finding a sweater. They make sure our room is straightened up and neat. The Helping Hand also has the duty of sharing something assigned on his/her Helping Hand Day. I will detail the job in this newsletter every Helping Hand period. We have sent home a schedule that will tell you when your child’s first Helping Hand date is. PLEASE BE SURE TO WRITE THE DATE ON YOUR CALENDAR AS IT IS AN IMPORTANT DAY FOR YOUR CHILD!!!! Children are often disappointed if it is missed!
Room #11 Kindergarten News
Jan. 30, 2012
Day 100
According to our tally, February 15 will be our 100th day of school (if we do not have any more snow days!). The children will be making plans for this day based on the book we will be reading next week called, Miss. Bindergarten Celebrates The 100th Day of Kindergarten. One of the traditional ways we celebrate this day in kindergarten is for children to bring in 100 of something. Please help your child count or recount 100 items and bring them to school before February 13th. He/She may independently count 100 items or count 10 groups of 10. He/She may count objects into a clear plastic bag (Ziploc works great) so they won’t get lost but are easily seen. It would be awesome if some children would create something out of 100 items to bring in to show us instead of bringing in 100 items in a bag, as some of the characters in our book do (see the examples from the book)! The students will tell the class about their 100 things, weigh bags, and compare and classify the variety of items. Look at the attached pages copied from the book to get ideas for what your child could bring to school for Day 100. Of course we want you to feel free to come up with your own ideas for how to share 100 too! Please have your child bring their 100 to school before February 13th.
Valentines Day
Our class Valentines Day party will be on Tuesday February 14th, which is Valentines Day! On February 6th we will be forming a post office in our classroom! The children will take turns: buying stamps for their valentines, selling stamps, canceling stamps and delivering the mail (Valentines!)during the days leading up to Valentines Day. Your child will need a homemade shoebox mailbox! Please help him/her make one at home using a box the size of a shoebox. Help him/her decorate it with hearts and happy- favorite things items and attach their name label to the front above the opening for their mail (See illustration above). Please have your child bring his/her mailbox to school before February 6th. We will have the children begin mailing and delivering valentines that week. Also, please have your child make a valentine card for each person and bring them into school anytime between February 1st and February 6thth. Attached is a list of labels for the members of our class. Please have your child cut these labels out and glue them onto the front envelope of each valentine. If you misplace these labels, you may type out the names of the students and have your child cut them out and glue them to their envelopes. This uniform label will help our children match words in order to correctly deliver the valentines as they work in our “Post Office”! Please do not attach candy or other items to the valentines or put candy (or other items!) in the envelopes. This makes the valentines to difficult to deliver.
Helping Hand Assignment
This time, the Helping Hand Assignment will be carried out in class. The students will conduct a mathematical survey to find out information about the people in Room#11!
Our class will be making a list of questions they would like to know about the people in Room #11 such as: What kind of ice cream do you like best? Have you ever been camping? Do you have any brothers? We will make these questions into survey cards. The Helping Hand will ask each person in our class the answer to his/her survey question during the day, and mark it on a graph. The Helping Hand will then look at the data to learn information about our class as a whole and report it to the class at the end of the day. Your child will bring home the information he/she has reported! Surveys are excellent tools for learning graphing and scientific inquiry concepts!
We will brainstorm a list of interesting questions this week. Perhaps your family could help us think of some good questions? If you have some suggestions, please jot them down and send your list in to school with your child in his/her yellow folder and we will consider adding them to our list of survey questions!
Understanding Reading Comprehension
The most appropriate way to reinforce reading comprehension skills at home is to ask your child a few questions as you read and enjoy books together. Model your thinking outloud as well as you ask yourself these same questions, starting out with words such as , "I am wondering if....." or "I think ......" . Expect your child to answer with descriptive details and full sentences. You may wish to keep this sheet near your favorite read aloud area so the questions stay fresh in your mind. Only ask as many questions as your child will tolerate, without spoiling the joy of reading together!
Ways to Develop Comprehension Skills As You Are Reading With Your Child or As Your Child is Reading To You!
· Make predictions about what this book will be about or about what will happen next during reading. Support your prediction(s) by telling why you think what you do
( Use the pictures, author/illustrator, title and the story structure elements of Character, Setting, Problem, Solution and Ending to help support your reasons).
· Who are the characters in the book?
· What is the setting?
· How do you think the illustrations were made?
· Is there a problem in this book? What is it?
· Is this book a story or informational text?
· What words did you like from the text? Are there words you do not understand? Can you use the new word in your own new way in a full sentence?
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How did the character change from the beginning to the end of the story?
· How does the character feel in the beginning/middle/ending of the story?
Expect your child to use descriptive words like miserable, excited and brave rather than happy and sad.
If the text is informational text (non-fiction) Ask:
- What is the topic?
- Tell some important information you learned about the topic? These are the supporting details.
- Is this information mostly fact or mostly opinion or experience?
- What further questions do you have about this topic?
If the text is a story (narrative text) Ask:
- What do you think the author will make happen next? Ask your child to support their answer by telling you why (Encourage your child to use picture clues, as well as story structure parts to help formulate their prediction and the reasons to support it).
- Is that a smart (or kind or fair or interesting) thing for the character to do?
- What would you do if you were in the story?
- Is this book real or pretend? How do you know?
- After finishing the book, ask, “What do you think will happen the next?" Ask, "Do you think this story is believable or not? Why?" and "What could be another good title for this story? Why?"
Ask your child to make a personal connection to the text by telling about a time he/she or someone else felt the same way as one of the characters, learned the same lesson, or had a similiar experience as a character in the book.
Have fun listening to your kindergartner read their Bag-A-Book books to you! Please remember to have your child return them soon so that others may be able to borrow them.
Room #11 Kindergarten Specials Schedule
Monday-P.E
Tuesday-Library
Wednesday-P.E and Music, Computer Lab
Thursday-P.E and Art
Friday-Music, Library and Spanish
Students should wear/bring sneakers on P.E days.
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