Our First Week... 3.5 days

What a great start to our year!  Everyone is getting to know each other, our classroom, and our school.  Thank you to everyone for your flexibility as we worked out some logistics during the first week.  It is my understanding that we'll continue having K-2 bring their students to class in the morning and pick them up inside the school building.  And especially for the early pick-up due to heat on Friday.

Snacks:  Thank you also to those of you who signed up to bring snacks.  We have plenty of snacks because we really only have about a 5 minute window to eat snack so we don't have a lot of time for multiple things.  This is great, but we still do need a few more snack donations.  I haven't heard yet if PPS is going to still provide a fruit/vegetable tasting starting in October, so we'll come to that hurdle when we find out.  So far most students have done very well with the small snack and then lunch at 11:15.

School Tools & Expectations:  In our first week we learned about and practiced using crayons, scissors, glue sponges, pencils, and dry erase markers/whiteboards.  Students are learning about classroom expectation during rug time, seat work, and free choosing.  They have heard and practiced Grout's expectations for bathrooms, the hallway, the cafeteria, and the playground.  It is a lot to take in, but don't worry, we'll keep practicing.  In our room we are working on taking turns talking and listening and keeping our bodies safe by walking, pushing in chairs, and picking things up off the ground.

Character Traits of that help Students: A lot of our first week we talked about perseverance and the how much Teacher Kari LOVES mistakes (mistakes are proof that we are trying and learning).  Students used perseverance to rip paper and glue it onto a body shape for our Rainbow of Friends bulletin board between the two Kindergarten rooms.  We also got to practice making mistakes as we cut out various shapes to create our own "Little Engine That Could" as we remember the part in the book, "I think I can... I think I can... I think I can..." and we try not to give up, even when things are difficult.  

Click on the books to hear some of the stories we read this week.

Foundational Literacy Skills: We started practicing our phonological awareness skills this week with our curriculum named "Heggerty".  In class I like to call it "Word Puzzles".  This 10 minute daily practice requires students to listen to the sounds in and parts of words.  It is crucial for preparing them for the later steps of writing and reading letters an words.  We also starting our writing and letter learning curriculum called "Fundations".  During this time each day we'll learn letter names, sounds, and how to form them using four lines to guide us: Sky Line, Plane Line, Grass Line, Worm Line.

Math:  We started talking about shapes, patterns, and counting as we set up our classroom wall calendar which will provide lots of opportunities to notice and predict patterns.  We also worked on developing our Math Minds this week as we talked more about making mistakes and not giving up. We'll continue this work next week for a bit too. Here's some videos we watched to learn about it:

     

Safety Drills: On our second day of school we practiced what to do during a Fire Drill with the whole school.  The Kindergarteners did such a great job they got a shout out from Principal Self doing such a great job following directions.  Next week we'll have our School Counselor teach a lesson in our classroom about our "Locks, Lights, Out of Sight" drills that are in case someone is unsafe in our building and we need to stay quiet and calm in our classrooms.  I know this brings up a lot of emotions, but please trust that we are teaching and practicing these drills with care and making sure students feel safe and unafraid while also learning the important procedures we have in place.