KINDERGARTEN BUDDIES
We met with our Kindergarten Buddies this week. This time, our kindness mission involved decorating door hangers with stickers and words to spread our message of kindness. Once finished, we walked around Lab School to deliver the door hangers to classrooms and offices. The children's excitement was contagious and they were determined to go unseen! Because our mission was so sneaky, it was hard to capture photos of everyone. We took a few and have been added to the Galllery. Our door hangers were not left anonymously. Each contained a stickers which said, "This is for you. Kindness is contagious. Pass it on! From, The Kindness Kids of Room 117 and Room 309."
PREPARED FOR THE WINTER
The winter weather will be arriving any day (some of us are wishing for snow). The radiators are on in our old building and will remain on until spring. The air is dry in the classrooms and sometimes it can be quite warm depending on which room you are in. Several children have been making frequent visit to Nurse Martha for some Vaseline to soothe their chapped lips. We recommend that children keep a stick of chapstick in their backpacks for the rest of the season so they can avoid time out of the classroom. Thanks to Milena and her family for the donation of a humidifier. It seems to be helping! We also encourage children to dress in layers for inside comfort and bring proper outdoor gear (hats, gloves/mittens and a warm coat) for outside conditions. Thank you!
CHANGE4CRANES
This is the last weekend for fundraising! Please send in the Change4Crane containers and donations on Monday. We will begin sorting and counting next week. All the money will be put together. It's not a competition to see who raised the most. Every penny and effort counts! Stay tuned for information about our Whooping Crane Celebration Party to be held the last week before the Winter Holidays.
WORD WORK
This week, we introduced contractions. A contraction is a shortened version of two words. To make the words smaller, we take one or more letters out and replace them with an apostrophe. We focused mostly on contractions with the word not, such as is not = isn't, are not = aren't, have not = haven't. We learned that the first word always or syllable (as in cannot) always stays the same and we "contract" the second word. For fun, you can have your child make contractions from two words or "stretch" a contraction to find the original two words.
MATH
In math, we continue to help children build their number sense. We work toward automaticity of the addition and subtractions facts up to 20 all year long but we want children to learn strategies that go beyond memorization, such as counting on, making ten, understanding the relationship between addition and subtraction, etc. For the rest of this of the quarter, we will help children develop these strategies.
During problem solving, we also ask children to explain their math reasoning. This isn’t always easy for them and it requires that they really think about the steps needed to solve a problem and organize that information. Many children who show quick, accurate skills in math struggle to answer these questions and simply say, “I just knew the answer.” There are many ways of getting to the correct answer and we try to highlight the different strategies that children use. Marilyn Burns, a highly respected math educator, describes our process:
It's insufficient and shortsighted to rely on quick, right answers as indications of students' mathematical power. During math lessons, probe children's thinking when they respond. Ask: Why do you think that? Why does that make sense? Convince us. Prove it. Does anyone have a different way to think about the problem? Does anyone have another explanation?
When children are asked to explain their thinking, they are forced to organize their ideas. They have the opportunity to develop and extend their understanding. Teachers are accustomed to asking students to explain their thinking when their responses are incorrect. It's important, however, to ask children to explain their reasoning at all times.
We encourage you to ask these same questions whenever your child is involved in a math activity at home.
READ ALOUD
The children are very engaged in our latest read aloud, The Giants and the Joneses. This book is a great for leaving us in suspense at the end of each chapter, allowing us to make thoughtful predictions and introducing the strategy of making an inference. In the book, the giants speak a different language, Groilish. Author Julia Donaldson is clever to give plenty of clues in the context of the surrounding sentences for us to figure out what the Groilish words might mean. I often pause to ask the children what they think a word might mean and then we read on or check the dictionary at the back of the book to see if we were correct. It's amazing how quickly some children are picking up on this new language. They are really using context clues to help with the understanding and their inferences are quite accurate. Later in the year, the children will apply this strategy to their own reading. This week, the children also had the chance to translate some Groilsh phrases into English and visa versa. There were also able to use their imagination to invent some of their own Groilish words. Be sure to ask your child about The Giants and the Joneses.
Have a wonderful weekend!
We met with our Kindergarten Buddies this week. This time, our kindness mission involved decorating door hangers with stickers and words to spread our message of kindness. Once finished, we walked around Lab School to deliver the door hangers to classrooms and offices. The children's excitement was contagious and they were determined to go unseen! Because our mission was so sneaky, it was hard to capture photos of everyone. We took a few and have been added to the Galllery. Our door hangers were not left anonymously. Each contained a stickers which said, "This is for you. Kindness is contagious. Pass it on! From, The Kindness Kids of Room 117 and Room 309."
PREPARED FOR THE WINTER
The winter weather will be arriving any day (some of us are wishing for snow). The radiators are on in our old building and will remain on until spring. The air is dry in the classrooms and sometimes it can be quite warm depending on which room you are in. Several children have been making frequent visit to Nurse Martha for some Vaseline to soothe their chapped lips. We recommend that children keep a stick of chapstick in their backpacks for the rest of the season so they can avoid time out of the classroom. Thanks to Milena and her family for the donation of a humidifier. It seems to be helping! We also encourage children to dress in layers for inside comfort and bring proper outdoor gear (hats, gloves/mittens and a warm coat) for outside conditions. Thank you!
CHANGE4CRANES
This is the last weekend for fundraising! Please send in the Change4Crane containers and donations on Monday. We will begin sorting and counting next week. All the money will be put together. It's not a competition to see who raised the most. Every penny and effort counts! Stay tuned for information about our Whooping Crane Celebration Party to be held the last week before the Winter Holidays.
WORD WORK
This week, we introduced contractions. A contraction is a shortened version of two words. To make the words smaller, we take one or more letters out and replace them with an apostrophe. We focused mostly on contractions with the word not, such as is not = isn't, are not = aren't, have not = haven't. We learned that the first word always or syllable (as in cannot) always stays the same and we "contract" the second word. For fun, you can have your child make contractions from two words or "stretch" a contraction to find the original two words.
MATH
In math, we continue to help children build their number sense. We work toward automaticity of the addition and subtractions facts up to 20 all year long but we want children to learn strategies that go beyond memorization, such as counting on, making ten, understanding the relationship between addition and subtraction, etc. For the rest of this of the quarter, we will help children develop these strategies.
During problem solving, we also ask children to explain their math reasoning. This isn’t always easy for them and it requires that they really think about the steps needed to solve a problem and organize that information. Many children who show quick, accurate skills in math struggle to answer these questions and simply say, “I just knew the answer.” There are many ways of getting to the correct answer and we try to highlight the different strategies that children use. Marilyn Burns, a highly respected math educator, describes our process:
It's insufficient and shortsighted to rely on quick, right answers as indications of students' mathematical power. During math lessons, probe children's thinking when they respond. Ask: Why do you think that? Why does that make sense? Convince us. Prove it. Does anyone have a different way to think about the problem? Does anyone have another explanation?
When children are asked to explain their thinking, they are forced to organize their ideas. They have the opportunity to develop and extend their understanding. Teachers are accustomed to asking students to explain their thinking when their responses are incorrect. It's important, however, to ask children to explain their reasoning at all times.
We encourage you to ask these same questions whenever your child is involved in a math activity at home.
READ ALOUD
The children are very engaged in our latest read aloud, The Giants and the Joneses. This book is a great for leaving us in suspense at the end of each chapter, allowing us to make thoughtful predictions and introducing the strategy of making an inference. In the book, the giants speak a different language, Groilish. Author Julia Donaldson is clever to give plenty of clues in the context of the surrounding sentences for us to figure out what the Groilish words might mean. I often pause to ask the children what they think a word might mean and then we read on or check the dictionary at the back of the book to see if we were correct. It's amazing how quickly some children are picking up on this new language. They are really using context clues to help with the understanding and their inferences are quite accurate. Later in the year, the children will apply this strategy to their own reading. This week, the children also had the chance to translate some Groilsh phrases into English and visa versa. There were also able to use their imagination to invent some of their own Groilish words. Be sure to ask your child about The Giants and the Joneses.
Have a wonderful weekend!