Welcome, June!

Where has the school year gone?!  I know I say this every year, but this year really did fly by!!  It's hard to believe that in just two weeks, I will be sending your children off for summer vacation. 

As always, we have been very busy the last three weeks.  Two weeks ago, we kicked off our ocean unit with a visit from Coastal Carol, a marine science educator who taught us about life in the intertidal zone.  The children LOVED this hands-on encounter with ocean life!

During Reading Workshop, the focus of the majority of our mini-lessons has been about asking questions as we read.  Four of our kindergarten standards are to ask questions about unknown words and parts of the text in both fiction and nonfiction books.  I have taught these skills through lots of read alouds, encouraging the children to think about the text as I'm reading and to raise their hands with any questions they have.  I taught the children to write their questions on sticky-notes as they are reading-to-self.  They can then share those questions with their buddy during buddy reading or with the class at the end of Reading Workshop.

Our current Writing unit is Writing Across Genres.  Throughout the year, our writing units have focused on poetry, personal narratives, informational books, pattern books, and how-to books.  Now that the children have learned about these different types of writing, they get to choose what genre they would like to write each day.  This has been an exciting unit to watch unfold due to the variety in genre from student to student.  At one table, you can find one child writing a poem, another child writing an informational book, a third child writing a fairytale (self initiated, because I did not teach fairytale writing), and the fourth child writing a how-to book.  The children have really made this unit their own, and they are excited to write every day! 

During Math, we have spent a lot of our time on addition and subtraction fluency through different math games. 

We have also been working on decomposing numbers.  The children have used different tools, such as craft sticks, to find combinations of numbers that equal a whole.  For example, one day I gave the children ten craft sticks.  They had to divide the craft sticks into different groups to show ways to make ten, such as 8 and 2.  They recorded the number models in their math journals, as seen below.

Another skill we have been practicing is exchanging.  We reviewed that ten ones are equivalent to one ten, and ten tens are equivalent to one hundred.  The children played an exchange game to help them practice this skill.

The week ahead proves to be another busy week.  We head to Crescent Beach on Tuesday, and Wednesday evening is the Ice Cream Social/Basket Raffle.  Let's hope for nice weather on Tuesday!

Warmly,
Katie