Weekly News: October 6-10

I had a great first week back to school and have enjoyed getting to know your children so far. This is a great group of students and I can tell that it's going to be a great year!

The Lion's Fest was a huge success! A huge shout-out to our room mom, Kindra, for all of her hard work and a big thank you to all of the parents that volunteered! THANK YOU! 

We are so excited about our field trip on Tuesday! We will be leaving school in the morning and returning just before dismissal. Remember to send your child to school in a normal t-shirt and without a snack. Also, you will NOT need to bring your folders on this day.

There is NO SCHOOL next Monday, October 13. Enjoy the three day weekend with your families. 

JOIN THE 100% GROUP!!  This week I will be 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 Colben and Katie!!  They were our top readers last week!  Way to go!! They spent the most time on Raz-kids last week!  

Smarty Ants: Our top Ant of the week award goes to Tyler!  Tyler was the Top Ant in Most Time Played, Most Words Built, and Most Stories Built.  Way to go Tyler!!  Keep working hard.  

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

We Give Books: 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!!

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: HE, SHE, WENT, TO, PLAY.

Letter Team:  AY (like in PLAY, DAY) and ING (like in SING, RING).

Word Family:  -AY and -AM. Please help your child with word families of the week by asking them to create different words with  the word family -ay (for example: BAY, DAY, SAY, MAY, HAY) and -am (SAM, HAM, RAM, SLAM).

Reading: This week, we will continue reading books about Autumn and leaves. I will assess students on letters, sounds, words, and letter teams, 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: We are practicing using the sound chart to sound out words that we do not know how to spell. In our journals, we are working on adding details to our writing and writing more than one sentence on the same topic. 

Math: We are beginning 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?" We will learn a deeper understanding of numbers and counting and relationships among numbers by exploring counting collections, tens frames, dot cards, and rekenreks (a fancy math manipulative you'll learn about soon!). Please join us on this number journey at home - count everything! Remind your child that a number can be represented by a group of objects, then by a word, and finally a numeral. 

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