Weekly News: October 13-17

I hope you enjoyed the three day weekend with your families.

We had so much fun on our field trip! Thank you to all of our parent chaperones! Make sure you check out our class Facebook page for more pictures!

We are starting our Home Reading Book Bags this week. Your child will be bringing home a special book bag on Tuesday. The book or books in your child's book bag will be books we are working on together in reading groups and/or books self-selected by your child. Book Bags are to be brought back and forth, home to school, every day. Book bags are also an ESSENTIAL part of your child's home reading - they should be reading these books EVERY DAY for homework. If you have any questions about our book bags or home reading program, please do not hesitate to ask!

A huge THANK YOU to my Fridays moms that have been cutting, copying, and prepping materials for our classes - and to the many parents that take prep work home! We have the best helpers and we could not do it without you! 

JOIN THE 100% GROUP!! I will continue assessing students on all LETTERS and SOUNDS as well as all of the SIGHT WORDS AND LETTER TEAMS introduced so far.  Our goal is that ALL students know ALL letters and sounds by the end of the first trimester.  We also have the goal that all students are keeping up with the sight words and letter teams introduced each week. 

RAZ-Kids: Congratulations to Whitney and Gideon!!  They were our top readers last week, reading over 2 hours online!!! Way to go!!

Smarty Ants: Our top Ants of the week awards go to John, Jose, and Gideon!  John was the Top Ant in Most Time Played, Jose had the Most Words Built, and Gideon had the Most Stories Built.  Way to go, boys!!  Keep working hard.  

IXL Math: Congratulations to Whitney and Sloan!!  They were our top IXL math students.  They spent the most time practicing math skills on IXL math!  Way to go!!

We Give Books: Last week we read 16 We Give Books!!  Way to go class!! We Give Books is a digital initiative that enables anyone with access to the Internet to put books in the hands of children who don't have them, simply by reading online.  For every book we read, a book is donated to a child in need!  My Goal is for the students in our class to read 25 books each month. You can access the We Give Website at the following link: We Give Books. Our class username is: thebesskinders and the password is: ilcs. Happy Reading!!

Upcoming Events: 

Friday, October 24: Pumpkin Investigation Day {more info coming later!}
October 27-31: Spirit Week :) {more info coming later!}
Friday, October 31: Halloween Centers! {more info coming later!}

If you are at the store and happen to think of us, our classroom would love: 

Headphones 

Halloween or Fall stickers and trinkets 

Treasure Box Prizes 

What Are We Learning This Week?: 

Sight Words: WHEN, HAVE, BE, AM, WHAT

Letter Team:  AW/AU (like in SAW/SAUCE) and the other OO (like in TOO, BOO).

Word Family:  -OT. Please help your child with word families of the week by asking them to create different words with  the word family -OT (for example: COT, JOT, ROT, SPOT). 

Reading: This week, we will read many non-fiction books about bats. I will begin pulling small reading groups this week, as well as conferencing one on one with individual students. Students are working hard at their independent activities and reading their self-selected "Good Fit Books". 

Writing: This  week we will write non-fiction stories about what we are learning about bats. We will continue to use an uppercase at the beginning of a sentence, finger spaces after each word, and a period at the end.

Math: We will continue our unit on "Counting with Friends". Our goal is to give each student a deep number sense as we explore questions like, "How can numbers be represented?" and "How can we show numbers in different ways?" This week we will learn all about the rekenrek - a special math tool. We will use the rekenrek to show that the same number can be represented in different ways (for example, the number 7 can be 5 and 2, 6 and 1, 4 and 3, and so on. We will also use the rekenrek to help us solve addition and subtraction math stories. 

Leadership: Our leadership theme for the month of October is TEAMWORK. Our kindergarten definition of teamwork is: working together to get a job done.