Sowing the Seeds of Independence

 We're SO sorry to keep you waiting for a Blog post, but we were experiencing some technical difficulties with our Blog. We are full swing into our rituals and routines and everyone is adjusting wonderfully to our classroom life. We have been very busy understanding where things go, what to do and when to do it, and we are learning, learning, learning. It's our job to help guide the students to become independent, self-directed learners and that's what we are doing at this time. Here are some tips for helping your student become and independent Kindergartener:
1. Drop them off in the car loop and let them walk inside.
2. Create a good-bye routine with your student, discuss it with them, and stick to it. (example: Tell them to have a great day, 1 hug, 1 kiss, and then walk away)
3. Let them carry their backpacks so they have ownership of it.

Stay tuned for an upcoming post on Reader's and Writer's Workshop later in the week!


P.S. Don't forget to check the blue Communication folder on a daily basis.

A Farm-tastic Year!

Hello new Kindergarteners! We are getting very excited for our year to start! We are busy getting everything ready to learn and play this year. Make sure that you are reading a lot of books before school starts... and spend lots of time playing, too!

We can't wait to see all of you at Orientation on August 20th at 8am!

Donor's Choose

Have you ever wondered what you could do for your child's teacher to make their classroom just that much better? If so, check out the amazing organization called DonorsChoose.org. DonorsChoose.org is a website that provides teachers with a place to write grants for their classrooms. Teachers can go "shopping" at approved stores and create a wish list for a project in for their classroom. Grants can range from small projects, such as more books for a classroom library, to large projects, such as field trips.

Once projects are approved and posted, donors (everyone from individuals to companies) can look through them to choose just the right project to support. Donors can contribute any amount towards any project that they like. You can sort by types of projects, locations of schools, grade level of classrooms... just about anything! If you or someone you know is thinking about making a charitable donation, this is a great way to go! All donations are tax deductable and go directly to helping individual classrooms. Just this week alone, 2,188 donors funded 557 projects that reached 17,589 students!

If you are interested in checking out this site, here is a link to the project that Mrs. Thomas and I have posted (http://www.donorschoose.org/sambito). We are hoping to have our project fully funded by the start of next school year, and we would love your help with spreading the word!

Arts Extravaganza Week

This week Chets Creek is celebrating the Arts! Our hallways have been transformed into an art gallery with our students' visual art from throughout the year, and each morning we are treated to an assembly featuring different types of performing arts.

On Monday, the Sugar and Spice Puppetry group performed for us. We danced and laughed as were entertained by the puppets and magician. Perhaps we will have some little magicians and puppeteers in our room.

Tuesday brought us members of the percussion section of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra! We learned all about percussion instruments and rhythm. Check out these videos from their performance:

Persuasive Writing

We are beginning a new unit in writing this week! We will begin learning about Persuasive Writing. Our unit is based on writing persuasive letters to friends and family, so our first step is teaching our students how to writing letters. Today we began by choosing our favorite book by Eric Carle and telling why it is our favorite in the body of our letter. Tomorrow we will learn about adding things to our letter such as the date, greeting, salutation, and signature.

As our unit progresses, we will begin using our letters to convince people of our idea. For example, we may be writing a letter to our parents asking for a new toy and explaining why we think that we deserve the toy. We will be stressing making our request and including detailed support in order to convince our reader.

The book I Wanna Iguana by Karen Kaufman Orloff is great for show young learners what we mean by persuasive writing. The book is about a boy who writes letters back and forth to his mother trying to convince her to let him have an iguana. We hope that this is the direction that our students' writing will be headed during this unit! So, get ready, I hear the postman heading in your direction!

Reading Strategies?!? What are those?!?

I’m sure that you opened your child’s homework folder today and thought ‘So… I got all of these papers, now what do they mean?!?’ In your child’s homework folder today, you should find several papers that will be very useful in helping your child with reading. I will take a little while to explain one of those important papers.

The first paper lists each of our reading strategies. What is a reading strategy, you may ask? In the simplest terms, a reading strategy is a tool that can be used to determine a word or phrase during reading. We tell our students that they each have a ‘tool box’ for reading and each of our reading strategies is a tool that they can pull out of their tool box when they are having trouble with a book.

Here are the strategies that your child should be using each time he/she is reading:
*Point to the words (make sure your finger is pointing to the word you are reading)
*Look at the pictures (if you get to a word that you don’t know, look at the pictures for a clue… but only guessing won’t work! Make sure to use other strategies to check if the word works!)
*Stretch out the word (say each sound slowly and snap it back together to read the word)
*Get our mouth ready (get your mouth ready to say the beginning sound in the word)
*Does it make sense? (ask yourself if the word you picked make sense in the sentence… if it sounds silly it might not be the correct word)
*Skip it and read on (if you still can’t figure it out, skip the word and come back to it later)
*Try it again (if the first time doesn’t sound right, try it again until it works)
*Look for the smaller words in the word (look for chunks that you know, for example ‘that’ or ‘catch’)
*Look for word families (rhyming word families all have the same ending but change the beginning sound)
*Try both vowel sounds (if the short vowel doesn’t work, try the long vowel sound)
*Self-correct (if you realize the word you said wasn’t right, go back and read it again with the correct word)
*Look for blends and endings (look for combinations of letters that you know)

As you can see, your child has many tools in their reading tool box. Please make sure to encourage your child to use these tools each and every time he/she reads to you!

Book-in-a-Bag

Your child should have begun bringing a book home each night in his/her Book-in-a-Bag. It is part of your child’s morning routine to change this book daily by selecting a new book from his/her Book Bin. As of right now, your child may only have 3-4 books in the Book Bin, and may bring the same book home several times. This is ok.

Here are some common concerns about Book-in-a-Bag and ideas to utilize this time more effectively:
*My child keeps bring the same book home each night: Not a problem. Rereading a book will allow your child to become familiar with the story. If it is a non-leveled (picture/story) book, your child should be able to retell the story to you. See if he/she is including all parts of the story, using language from the story, and included the dialogue of the characters. Discuss the characters, setting, plot (problem & solution) for the story.

*My child is bringing home a book that seems too hard for him/her to read on their own. Is it ok for me to read it to him/her? Yes; reading to your child is a wonderful step to helping your child learn how to read. Try moving your finger under each word as you read it to help your child better understand that each word you say is a separate word on the page.

*My child is not bringing a book home every night. Book-in-a-Bag is a part of your child’s homework, and it is very important that you uphold this nightly routine. We will do our best to remind your child at school, but we need your help at home. We are unable to watch all 34 of our students pick a book. It is their responsibility. Please help your child understand how much you love to read with them. This should give them incentive to remember their book… it can be your special time each night.