Week of 2/3

It was great hearing about all the kind acts of our Grasshoppers during Kindness Week last week. I was so impressed with the things students were doing to be kind! It was wonderful emphasizing kind acts in the classroom, as well as at home. I hope you benefitted from plenty of kind acts in your home last week! 

Language Arts

Our sight word this week is my. We have now learned 30 sight words! Please check the words on the class website  to ensure your child is retaining these words. 

We will begin Unit 3 of Fundations this week. Blending sounds to read and spell words is now the main focus in our reading curriculum. There are some great resources in the Unit 3 Fundations Home Support letter. 

Math

We will continue with Topic A of Module 5 this week. In Topic A students make a major leap forward in their understanding of number sentences. They represent addition stories by using number sentences with mathematical symbols, such as 4 + 2 = 6, and read their work by using mathematical language, “4 plus 2 equals 6.” They also recontextualize the number sentence by using it to retell the story. Students work with three problem types in this topic: add to with result unknown, put together with total unknown, and take apart with both addends unknown. By the end of the topic, students can find the total of an addition sentence without a story context.

Art Vistas

We have an Art Vista lesson on Thursday. This time, we will be looking at houses and designing our own "dream house." Thank you to Emilly, Shelbie, Kevin, Mallory, and Evelyn for your help with Art Vistas.

Upcoming Events

Valentines Day: We will exchange cards in class on February 14th, but this is not a "party." We have a fun celebration of friendship, exchange valentines, and take them home to show our families. So that you can prepare for this event, I wanted to share some information:

1. Please send in a card for each child. There are 23 total students in our class: 15 girls and 8 boys.
2. Please ONLY sign the card & put nothing in the TO box. It is challenging enough for kindergartners to pass out valentines to all their classmates. Having the "to" part filled out makes this extremely challenging and it takes far too long. Thank you for your help with this!
3. Please try to purchase valentines that do not have candy attached. I know those can sometimes be hard to find, but there are good choices with stickers, play tattoos, and other non-food goodies.

**Library is every Wednesday. Please return your child's library book by Tuesday each week.

**School spirit days are every Wednesday. Wear your Grasshopper t-shirt or Alta Vista gear to show your school pride!

This Week's Helpers & Activities
Monday: Centers @ 12:20 (Emily)
Tuesday: Return Library Books, Centers @ 12:20  (Ellen)
Wednesday: Library @ 9:10 (Emily & ????), Music @ 12:15, Dismissal @ 1:15
Thursday: Art Vista @ 12:20 (Emily, Shelbie, Kevin, Mallory, Evelyn)

Upcoming Events

Wednesday, 2/12: Kindergarten Literacy Night

Friday, 2/14: Valentines Exchange in Class

2/17-2/21: No School: President's Week

3/6-3/14: Parent-Teacher Conferences 

Monday, 3/17: No School: Professional Development Day

Week of 1/27

We have several events going on at school this week: The Great Kindness Challenge, 100 Day, and the start of Lunar New Year! There is a Spirit Day on Wednesday to celebrate the last two events: Dress like you're 100 years old OR dress in red/gold for Lunar New Year OR do both! Remember that Spirit Days are optional, but the kids do enjoy seeing each other dressed up.

Great Kindness Challenge

As you may have seen in Mrs. Bailey's weekly update, we are kicking off "The Great Kindness Challenge" on Monday. This is an opportunity to really focus as a family on how our kind acts can help make everyone's day a little better. In kindergarten, we will be keeping track of kind acts with a "kindness chain." Children can come in each morning and tell me about a kind act they did at home, and we will also celebrate kind acts done at school. When children tell me about a kind act, they will receive a loop for our kindness chain. They write their name on the loop, and we will add it to our classroom chain. We are hoping that by the end of the week, our chain gets all the way across the classroom! You can support children at home by reminding them to tell me about a kind act you saw them do and brainstorming ways that they can be kind & helpful, both at home and at school. You can find a list of some simple ideas here. 

Conferences

Spring parent-teacher conferences are coming up on March 6 through March 14. These are optional conferences, but are available to anyone who would like an update on their child's progress. However, if your child had several areas marked with a "B," I would like to meet with you. Please check your email to sign up! 

100 Day

This Wednesday is 100 Day! This is a fun celebration of the number 100 and being at school together for 100 days. There is a schoolwide Spirit Day on this day-- dress like you are 100 years old. Since 100 Day is also the start of Lunar New Year, children can also choose to dress in red/gold. As always, Spirit Days are totally optional, but very fun. I look forward to seeing many 100-year-old Grasshoppers dressed in red on Wednesday! 

Language Arts

We have many fun stories to read and center activities to do in honor of 100 Day- it will be an all week celebration. Our sight words this week are like and see. This is the last week of Unit 2 in Fundations. We will finish upper case letter instruction, covering letters Qq through Zz this week.

A big emphasis right now is using our knowledge of letter sounds, word families, and sight words to write simple sentences. Children need to be able to put together a readable sentence on their own by the end of kindergarten. Encourage your children to write and spell phonetically as often as possible to build their abilities as independent writers. Try to resist the temptation to spell words for them if they ask, rather, encourage them to "stretch the word out" and put down all the sounds they hear themselves. They can write notes to you, grocery lists, cards for family members, etc. You can learn more about encouraging early writing & reading skills at our Literacy Night on February 12th. If you're interested in joining us, please check your email for the Google Form to RSVP.

Math

We will finish with Module 4 this week, then start Module 5: Addition & Subtraction. In Topic A of this Module, Students make a major leap forward in their understanding of number sentences. They represent addition stories by using number sentences with mathematical symbols, such as 4 + 2 = 6, and read their work by using mathematical language, “4 plus 2 equals 6.” They also recontextualize the number sentence by using it to retell the story. Students work with three problem types in this topic: add to with result unknown, put together with total unknown, and take apart with both addends unknown. By the end of the topic, students can find the total of an addition sentence without a story context.

We will also have lots of number & counting fun this week in celebration of 100 Day.

Upcoming Events

Valentines Day: I know that valentines are now available in most stores, and children will be asking about our celebration. We will exchange cards in class on February 14th, but this is not a "party." We have a fun celebration of friendship, exchange valentines, and take them home to show our families. So that you can prepare for this event, I wanted to share some information:

1. Please send in a card for each child. There are 23 total students in our class: 15 girls and 8 boys.
2. Please ONLY sign the card & put nothing in the TO box. It is challenging enough for kindergartners to pass out valentines to all their classmates. Having the "to" part filled out makes this extremely challenging and it takes far too long. Thank you for your help with this!
3. Please try to purchase valentines that do not have candy attached. I know those can sometimes be hard to find, but there are good choices with stickers, play tattoos, and other non-food goodies.

**Library is every Wednesday. Please return your child's library book by Tuesday each week.

**School spirit days are every Wednesday. This week we have a special Spirit Day: Dress like you're 100 years old or wear red/gold in celebration of Lunar New Year.

This Week's Helpers & Activities
Monday: Centers @ 12:20 (Emily)
Tuesday: Return Library Books, Centers @ 12:20  (Ellen & Jongse)
Wednesday: 100 Day! Dress Like You're 100 Day, Library @ 9:10 (Emily & Meeta), Music @ 12:15, Dismissal @ 1:15

Upcoming Events

Wednesday, 1/29: 100th Day of School

Friday, 2/14: Valentines Exchange in Class

2/17-2/21: No School: President's Week

3/6-3/14: Parent-Teacher Conferences 

Monday, 3/17: No School: Professional Development Day 

Week of 1/21

Please check out the Sign-Up Genius if you are able to help with centers or in the library-- there are still plenty of openings!

Language Arts
We will begin reading many snow-themed stories for the next couple of weeks, and do writing projects and crafts around this theme. Our sight words this week are to and into. 

Our emphasis in Fundations will continue to be blending sounds to read and write words with fluency. We also continue to work on the formation of upper case letters, covering two letters per day. This week, we will cover letters Ii through Pp. As I said last week, the Fundations Parent Letter has a lot of great tips on ways to encourage blending, as well as guides to correct formation of the upper case letters.

Math

Topic C expands part–total thinking to include decomposition and composition story contexts. Students identify and choose math tools to help them show the situation and explain their thinking. The teacher uses student work to demonstrate how to write a matching number sentence with symbols. For example, 6 + 1 = 7.

Upcoming Events
100 Day: We will be celebrating our 100th day of school on January 29th. Next week, our center activities will be around the number 100. The 100th day celebration is just a fun way to celebrate 100 days of school after we've been counting up to this day during calendar time.

Valentines Day: I know that valentines are now available in most stores, and children will be asking about our celebration. We will exchange cards in class on February 14th, but this is not a "party." We have a fun celebration of friendship, exchange valentines, and take them home to show our families. So that you can prepare for this event, I wanted to share some information:

1. Please send in a card for each child. There are 23 total students in our class: 15 girls and 8 boys.
2. Please ONLY sign the card & put nothing in the TO box. It is challenging enough for kindergartners to pass out valentines to all their classmates. Having the "to" part filled out makes this extremely challenging and it takes far too long. Thank you for your help with this!
3. Please try to purchase valentines that do not have candy attached. I know those can sometimes be hard to find, but there are good choices with stickers, play tattoos, and other non-food goodies.

**Library is every Wednesday. Please return your child's library book by Tuesday each week.
**School spirit days are every Wednesday. Wear your Alta Vista t-shirts or your Grasshopper t-shirts to show your school pride.

This Week's Helpers & Activities
Monday: NO SCHOOL: MLK Day
Tuesday: Centers @ 12:20 (Emily & Shelbie)
Wednesday: Library @ 9:10 (Emily & ???), Music @ 12:15, Dismissal @ 1:15
Friday: Centers @ 12:20 (Marie & Shelbie)

Upcoming Events
Monday, 1/20: No School: MLK Holiday
Wednesday, 1/29: 100th Day of School
Friday, 2/14: Valentines Exchange in Class
2/17-2/21: No School: President's Week

Week of 1/13

We have quite a few openings in the upcoming weeks, including this week, for both centers and library. Please see the Sign-Up Genius if you are able to help.

This week, we will hit the half-way mark (90th school day) in our kindergarten year. This is where the kindergarten curriculum really takes off, and your continued support with the curriculum will be especially important at this time. Reading to your children and asking them questions about what they are reading, helping them blend and read/write short vowel words (eg: hop, can, rat, etc.) and reinforcing math facts and sight words is really important at this time.

Ms. Gomathi' Student Teaching
For those of you who haven't heard yet, Ms. Gomathi is now staying for our full kindergarten day as she takes on her semester of student teaching. We are so excited to have her join us all day-- it was amazing last week having her help and support all day long. As part of her program, she will need to video herself teaching some lessons. A permission slip will be coming home in this week's Wednesday envelope which you can review and sign if you give permission for her to record herself teaching in our classroom. I have attached two letters from her with more information about both herself and her credential program, as well as the purpose of these recordings. Please look out for this permission slip on Wednesday. Thank you for supporting Gomathi as she works toward completing her teacher credential program.

Language Arts
This week, we will delve deeper into our study of owls. We will complete some informational writing about owls and do a few owl crafts. Our sight words this week are this and that. Our emphasis in Fundations will continue to be blending sounds to read and write words with fluency. This week, we will also begin instruction on the formation of upper case letters, covering two letters per day. As I said last week, the Fundations Parent Letter has a lot of great tips on ways to encourage blending, as well as guides to correct formation of the upper case letters.

Math
We will continue with Topic B in Module 4 this week. Topic B provides space for students to decompose shapes and numbers in more than one way. Students record their decompositions and analyze them to answer questions such as, How can the same total be made of different parts? Which numbers can be part of 5? Which numbers cannot be part of 5? There will be some new vocabulary for those of you who do not have older students who have done the Eureka math program. Of particular importance are the words "compose" (finding numbers that add up to a given number-- like 3 & 2 compose 5) "decompose" (take apart a number-- like 5 can be 4 & 1 OR 3 & 2) and number bonds (a model to show mathematical thinking).

**Library is every Wednesday. Please return your child's library book by Tuesday each week.
**School spirit days are every Wednesday. Wear your Alta Vista t-shirts or your Grasshopper t-shirts to show your school pride.

This Week's Helpers & Activities
Monday: Centers @ 12:20 (Emily & ????)
Tuesday: Centers @ 12:20 (Meeta & Shelbie)
Wednesday: Library @ 9:10 (Emily & ????), Music, Dismissal @ 1:15

Upcoming Events
Monday, 1/20: No School: MLK Holiday
Wednesday, 1/29: 100th Day of School
Friday, 2/14: Valentines Exchange in Class
2/17-2/21: No School: President's Week