Enjoy the Break

We had a fantastic awards assembly today where students were honored in Spanish, Chinese and PE.  Our class had a few honorees including Casey Soisson for Spanish, Toddae Waters and Blaise Burns for Chinese and Jonathan Galloway for PE.  Congratulations to those students for doing such a great job in these classes!!

I also want to congratulate Casey Soisson as this week's Student of the Week.  Casey has been so diligent in his quest to get on blue and purple every day.  He may have one of the best "bubbles" I've ever seen! :)  He will be honored school wide when we get back from break.

Enjoy your time these next three weeks with your children and keep reading with them every night!!

See you in October.

Week 9

This is the final week of the first quarter!  Important reminders:  students will be released at 1 pm on Friday and will not return to school until Monday, October 17th.  If you need child care during this break, Cherry Hill Baptist Church is providing this service.  You can contact the church or school for more information.

As we prepare for a three week break, I would like to stress the importance of reinforcing the concepts that we have been learning the last nine weeks at home.  This goes for procedures and policies as well.  ***Speaking of policies and procedures, I am thrilled to hear that many of you have implemented our behavior plan at home.  It's fun to hear the kids come in during the week telling me they were on "blue." This makes our classroom management plan that much easier to enforce when parents have the same expectations at home.

For our final four days we will complete our first class story which we will publish into a classroom book.  The book will be added to our classroom library so the kids can read it during centers.  We will also learn two new high frequency words (go, we) that will assist in our class pursuit of high level reading.  Math will be devoted to shapes - 2D and 3D and where they exist in our everyday life.

Congrats to Zakiah Gregg - this week's Student of the Week.  Zakiah has made an unbelievable turn around in regards to behavior and her improvement was applauded by the entire class on Friday.  There was not one student that didn't smile when her name was called out.  Her entire week was blue and purple other than one green day.  AMAZING job!

Week 8

This week's focus is the writing process.  Every student will begin journaling every day, to not only practice the skills involved, but to learn the process - prewrite, draft, respond, revise, proofread and publish.  Most kindergarteners are not confident in their ability to write, so it is important to get them comfortable right from the start.  Their journals will be great documentation of how their writing ability evolves over the year - not to mention a wonderful keepsake!

If your child has a favorite book that they would like to bring to class and share, I encourage books to be sent with them to school.  We have circle time every day where I do a read aloud and discussion - new material is always a great thing.

This week's Student of the Week goes to Presley Burns.  He has been so diligent in his effort to reach blue and purple the past couple of weeks and always displays kind behavior in the classroom.  He will be honored Monday morning during morning assembly with a school certificate and a chance to win a great prize.  All Students of the Week will now be honored school wide.

I want to thank you for your support in bringing in snacks for the class.  I hope this process is working for everyone.  Again, please let me know if you have any issues.

Week 7

I hope everyone had a relaxing Labor Day.  Having an extra day to spend with my family always make me happy, as I'm sure it does all of you. 

We are getting right to work this week by administering the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) which are a set of procedures and measures for assessing the acquisition of early literacy skills from kindergarten through sixth grade. They are designed to be short (one minute) fluency measures used to regularly monitor the development of early literacy and early reading skills.

DIBELS are individually administered measures of student skills in each of the key basic early literacy skills.  Comprised of seven measures to function as indicators of phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, accuracy and fluency with connected text, reading comprehension, and vocabulary, DIBELS were designed for use in identifying children experiencing difficulty in acquisition of basic early literacy skills in order to provide support early and prevent the occurrence of later reading difficulties. We will be testing all kindergarten students Tuesday and Wednesday.  We will be pulling them one by one until we have completed the entire grade.  This assessment will be done again mid year and at the end of the year to assess each child's gains and whether or not they meet kindergarten expectations. Our Student of the Week is Mahala Storm.  Mahala is a ray of sunshine in our class as she always brings a good attitude to school.  She is well liked by her classmates and makes a strong effort every day to do her very best.  Congratulations to Mahala! Stay tuned for fun and exciting activities going on in the classroom.