Week of 4/27

Thank you for meeting with me in Office Hours last week. I took your ideas and tried to incorporate most of them in the Week 5 At-Home Learning. We have added more optional activities based on the feedback that some would like a few more choices, both online and offline. Go to the second page of the template for both the optional activities as well as the weekly schedule to help you plan the activities. For those of you who do not have a school iPad, please email me if you'd like your child to connect to our class Kodable or codeSpark accounts. We are trying to get those added onto the Clever sign-in, but that hasn't happened yet.

New Schedule
Based on the feedback I got on my survey last Friday, it looked like the 2nd small group Zoom was well-received, and that the times worked for you. So we will be following this schedule:

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
8:30-9:00	XX	Grasshopper	Butterflies	Ladybugs	XX
9:15-9:45	Butterflies	Ladybugs	Bumblebees	Caterpillars	Grasshopper
10:00-10:30	Whole Class	Caterpillars	Whole Class	Bumblebees	Whole Class
3:00-4:00	XX	Office Hours by request	Office Hours by Request	XX	XX

I do have one adjustment to the schedule, for this week only. There will be NO MEETINGS on Friday 5/1. I will be attending a virtual teaching conference all day Friday, so Friday's Zooms have been rescheduled. I also will be sending out the links to your child's Zoom each morning in SeeSaw, in an effort to make them a little more independent in their sign-on to Zoom. If they go to their SeeSaw account on the morning of their scheduled meeting, the link to the meeting can be found there. I will also continue to send the link to you, but they can also be found in SeeSaw, and I hope this helps with getting your child onto the meeting independently.

Language Arts
This week's sight word is your. Our theme this week is Farm, and we have a few stories and writing activities to go along with the theme in SeeSaw.

In the small-group Zoom, I will continue to be discussing a story that is assigned in KidsA-Z. When they go into Kids A-Z, you will see a new spaceship called "Assignments" and your child will find the story of the week there. I would like the children to preview the story before we meet so that we can discuss the story productively, but please do not have them take the quiz until after our discussion.

Whole-class Zoom meetings will be on Monday and Wednesday at 10:00 this week, and on Thursday at 11:30. On Monday, I will talk about the activities for the week. On Wednesday, it will be a "show & tell" day-- draw a picture of your favorite farm animal & be prepared to share your picture. On Thursday, we will wrap up our week together!

Math/STEAM
This week we have two Farm-themed math activities. We are beginning to work on story problems, so we have a video and an activity to focus on this skill. We also have another math activity in the optional area that can be played multiple times and is great for reinforcing addition & subtraction skills. Because it does need to be printed out, we put it in the optional area.

We have a fun STEAM activity this week-- design and build a barn. Please use whatever building toys you have in your home: Legos, blocks, Playstix, KEVA planks, etc.

Office Hours
Office hours are still on the schedule above, but they are on an as-requested basis. You need to email me & let me know that you or your child would like to meet in office hours. Please email me by noon on the day of office hours (Tuesday or Wednesday) so that I know I need to be available. I will then send you an invitation to the Zoom.

P.E. with Mr. Thomas 

Mr. Thomas will be meeting with the kindergarten students each Tuesday at 1:45 for a live P.E. lesson on Zoom. See the email for Zoom links. He also records one lesson that's a little different that is available in SeeSaw.

Week of 4/20

This week, as we continue into Week 4 of At-Home Learning, we have added a sample schedule to the bottom of the lesson plan template. We hope that this will help make the work more manageable for you and your children. Remember-- your child should be spending about 40 minutes on SeeSaw activities with 15-20 minutes of reading per day. Also, on a day that your child meets with me for small group reading activities, that counts towards your child's learning minutes. Please also keep in mind that we have the entire week over which to spread out the SeeSaw activities. Please do not submit all SeeSaw activities on the first day! There are many optional activities listed at the bottom of the template, as well. Some go onto a second page as we weren't able to keep the template to one page, so be sure to check those out if you are looking for enrichment activities, both online and offline.

Office Hours
I'd like to check in with each family this week to find out how things are going. If you'd like me to further explain any of the activities, or if you'd like more information on how to teach a particular concept, this is the time to ask. This week, I'd like to check in with every family, but afterwards, office hours will be optional. Please sign up for a time block here. You will meet one-on-one with me during this time block, but you may need to wait in the waiting room for me if I am with another family. Meetings are about 10-15 minutes.

Language Arts

This week's sight word is where. Our theme this week is Earth Day, and we have a few stories and writing activities to go along with the theme in SeeSaw.

I will be continuing to meet with each of my reading groups on a small group Zoom this week. It will continue to be at 9:15, on the same day it was last week. Invitations for those Zoom meetings went out on Friday. Whole-class Zoom meetings will be on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 10:00 this week. On Monday, I will talk about the activities for the week. On Wednesday, it will be a "show & tell" day-- show something that can be recycled. On Friday, we will wrap up our week together!

Math/STEAM

This week we will have an "Earth Day" themed addition & subtraction activity. Your children can play this activity more than once if they'd like!

Be sure to check out the optional STEAM activities on page 2 of our lesson plan template. We have some fun Earth Day-themed activities! 

P.E. with Mr. Thomas

Mr. Thomas will be meeting with the kindergarten students each Tuesday at 1:45 for a live P.E. lesson on Zoom. The link to this meeting is the same as last week, and can be viewed in SeeSaw.

Looking forward to our week ahead of online learning! As always, please let me know about any difficulties you are having-- I'm here to help however I can.

Week of 4/13

I hope you were able to enjoy a break from school and your regular routine during this past week. Although I'm sure it was not what many of you had planned for Spring Break, I hope you were able to make the most of it. 

This week, we launch some activities designed by the AV kindergarten team. You will see a shift in the lesson plan template from some of the activities being in the "optional category" to now being part of our required activities. However, the minutes of study remain the same-- 40 minutes of SeeSaw activities with 20 minutes of reading per day. Please also keep in mind that we have the entire week over which to spread out the SeeSaw activities. Please do not submit all SeeSaw activities on the first day! We hope this makes the activities manageable for you. There are many optional activities listed at the bottom of the template, as well. Some go onto a second page as we weren't able to keep the template to one page, so be sure to check those out if you are looking for other things to do.

Language Arts

This week's sight words are run and into. Our story this week is A Rainbow of My Own by Don Freeman. We will be taking a closer look at rainbows, and doing some writing about rainbows as well. Many of our reading activities will involve both Lexia and KidsA-Z this week. Please ensure that your children are utilizing both of these programs, as they are both geared to your child's reading level. 

I am also going to begin meeting with each of my reading groups on a small group Zoom this week. You should have received these Zoom invitations last Friday, but each group will meet with me one time per week, in addition to our daily whole-class Zoom. The small group meetings will be at 9:15 one time per week, and the whole-class Zoom will continue to be at 10:00 daily. This week, I will be testing out the viability of instruction during small-group Zoom, so please try and have your child attend this 9:15 session. This week, we will be doing "Picture of the Day" during small group instruction. If there is a conflict with your child's small-group Zoom day/time, please let me know. If I do not have good participation during small group Zoom, I will not be able to move forward with instruction during this time, as it will have to be accessible to all for me to continue on this route. Both the small-group meetings and whole-class meetings will not exceed 30 minutes, and will often be shorter than that. 

Math

The most important module in our entire kindergarten math program is Module 4, Number Pairs, Addition and Subtraction to 10. Therefore, we are going to continue reinforcing addition & subtraction facts through the end of the year, as well as reviewing other modules we covered. The last module in our program, Module 6, Analyzing, Comparing, and Composing Shapes is the only module that we did not get to in the classroom environment, and it is an extremely small module. You can see on your child's report card from March that the majority of areas marked with an "NA" (meaning we did not cover it yet) are in the addition & subtraction fluency areas, so that is what you will see for the remainder of the year. 

With that in mind, we do feel that happynumbers.com is a great website for promoting math fact fluency. If your child has not logged onto that site yet (I see about 4 students who haven't visited the site in my teacher report), please have them working there this week, as that is the majority of our math minutes this week. This program, similar to Lexia, will adapt to the math needs of your children. I am happy to say that almost everyone in the class is already approaching the first grade level in math! To access happynumbers.com (a website, not an app)-- use Safari browser on your iPads-- please email me if you need the class code or passwords.

P.E. with Mr. Thomas

Exciting news! Mr. Thomas will be meeting with the kindergarten students each Tuesday at 1:45 for a live P.E. lesson on Zoom. A link to this meeting will be pushed out in your child's SeeSaw account.

Looking forward to our week ahead of online learning! As always, please let me know about any difficulties you are having-- I'm here to help however I can.