Life in Kindergarten: Thank you, Miss Cross!

Dear Parents,

I would like to start by thanking Miss Cross for the wonderful job she did teaching your children this fall. She is a warm and devoted teacher who worked hard to ensure the children had a smooth transition to kindergarten and between teachers. She focused on establishing routines and building a sense of community in our classroom. It is clear that the children care deeply about Miss Cross and will miss having her as their classroom teacher. Luckily for them, she is still working at Rowe School, so they will be able to see her every day! I feel fortunate to have had Miss Cross as my long-term substitute teacher. I always knew the children were in good hands with her. My hope is that this gave Miss Cross the experience needed to find a well-deserved teaching position of her own next fall!

Although it was hard for me to say goodbye to my baby Carter last Monday morning, your children really helped make that transition easier. It's amazing how being in the moment in a kindergarten classroom leaves little time for you to think about anything else. We had a busy week of getting to know each other while at the same time not skipping a beat with our learning.

During Reading Workshop we:

reviewed and practiced read-to-self and buddy reading expectations.
learned how to choose just-right books for our book baskets.
learned how to make a reading plan at the start of read-to-self and buddy reading every day.
learned that readers point and hop under each word as they read.
practiced two reading strategies, Lips the Fish and Eagle Eye, and learned how to use these strategies together to help us read an unknown word.

During Writing Workshop we:

identified patterns in books.
learned that writers become better writers by writing every day. We should write our words first then draw our pictures.
learned that we can get an idea for a pattern book from a book we have read or heard before. I modeled writing a pattern book based on The Gingerbread Man book I had read a few minutes prior.
reviewed that instead of starting a new pattern book every day, writers should finish the pattern book they were working on the day before.

During Math we:

practiced ordering numbers.
learned a new game, Monster Squeeze. During this game, one partner guessed a mystery number and the other partner gave clues such as "No, my number is bigger/smaller than that number." The first partner continued to guess a number on the number line, based on the clues, until he/she determined the mystery number.
played Roll and Record, a game that required us to build a graph to show the number we rolled most when rolling a dot die.
practiced solving addition number stories.