Please read the following information, as it's incredibly important and has been an on-going issue for some students.
Issue Regarding Pick-Ups
As of late, there have been many instances of people I don't know coming to pick up students. This is a huge safety issue and puts me in an uncomfortable position. We have about 20 students who are walkers, and most students have 2 people that can pick them up. That's 40 faces that I already have to remember. If you add on grandmothers/grandfathers, neighbours, aunts, uncles, etc., that number can easily double. I kindly remind you of the following:
Please write a note in the morning to inform me if someone else besides the usual is picking up your child or message me on Twitter. Phone calls at the end of the day or telling me in passing is not preferred.
I have the right to deny any student to anyone who is not on the approved pick-up list in the office. Anyone could say that they are there for a certain student. I will be going through the approved pick-up lists next week to see who is approved for every single studentand will be sending them straight to the office if they aren't.
If your child attends daycare and you are picking them up instead, it is your responsibility to let the daycare know. They always come to me and ask if so and so has been picked up. It should also be communicated with me that they are not attending daycare.
I apologize for being so blunt, but I hope you can appreciate my concern. There's also so many things going on throughout the day that it's already hard enough for me to remember things!!
We're at the end of another week! Most of the updates from this week are in the previous blog post, but here are a couple of important items. Unfortunately, I left the iPad at school, so I won't be able to post pictures until Monday! Behaviour Reports
Miss Smith and I have come up with an idea to keep you posted on your child's beahviour. Up to this point, we've been sending home random notes to inform you of any incidents your child was involved in. We are just changing the format a little bit to make it more time-efficient. We will be sending home a behaviour report. We have created two kinds:
This is what they look like! We will send them home as we see fit, so we just wanted to introduce them to you before we started using them.
Literacy Update- Ow!!
The sound we make when we hurt ourselves: it's also the sound that ou and ow often make! This week we learned about the sound /ow/ and sounded out some words with them.
Note: ow can also make the /o/ sound like in row. Also, when you say the word mouse, the ou almost make an /eh-ow/ sound... but practise with /ow/ anyway, for they should still be able to hear what word it makes! What words can you think of that have the /ow/ sound in them? I'd love to see them!
February Bingo!
A copy of this was placed in your child's important bag. It's totally optional, but has some great ideas of learning you can do at home. If you do do them, please share them with me on twitter :)
That's all for now. Have a nice weekend!
~ Miss Pliura
Ps: Make sure you read about our secret mission in the previous classroom post :)
This post is only for junior students who are on our Jr. Dance Team! :)
Here is February's schedule. You can pick up a copy for yourself outside of my classroom. I'm aware that some of my links on YouTube aren't working. I'm not entirely sure how to upload an mp3 file, so in the mean time, if you would like a copy of the music, please bring in a USB and I can put it on for you. Please make sure you put it in a ziploc bag/envelope with your first and last name on it.
I'm currently planning our pizza party, so stay tuned :)
I hope everyone had a great weekend and a good start to the week :) I have lots to share with you so I won't waste any time :)
Psst...
I'm curious to see who is reading the blog, so I have a secret mission planned that I've heard other teachers doing. Please send your child to school on Monday, February 2nd wearing a red shirt. This will give me an idea of who is reading the blog :) If you don't own a red shirt, put a red ribbon in their hair, or just be creative. Thanks :)
February Calendar
Hamilton Bull Dogs Presentation: Bruiser is coming to visit! He will read to us and visit our classroom :)
Math Jam: This is a super fun presentation that we get to watch, and it's all about math!! Super exciting!
Arts Program: Our school was selected to have a special guest come visit us and teach us art. More information to come soon :)
Balloon Day: Like popcorn day, but for our balloon words! Stay tuned :)
Family Literacy Day
Tuesday was Family Literacy Day!! We were so excited to invite our family members into our classroom to read with us. Students were so excited all day! We had a great turn out! Here are some pictures :) (they warm my heart!)
Report Cards - Update!
Report cards are all finished and will be sent home on February 12th. Please refer to my previous post to see who is commenting on what. I have broken down a bit further what each subject includes. You will find comments about your child on each sub topic:
Personal/Social
Following classroom rules
Attentive listening
Making and keeping friends
Language
Interest in reading
Reading ability
Knowledge of letters and sounds
Interest in writing
Writing ability
Mathematics
Interest in math
Knowledge of number sense
Knowledge of measurement
Knowledge of patterning
Knowledge of geometry
Science
Interest in science
Understanding safety rules
Knowledge of garbage vs. recycling
Safety rules of classroom technology
Gym/Health
Fine motor ability (using hands)
Knowledge of healthy vs. unhealthy food
Art
Interest in visual art
This is simply a skeleton of each report card. There are additional comments and next steps also embedded.
Writing Mania!
Last week we introduced journal writing, an exciting opportunity for all of our students. Once students understand that writing is simply "talk written down", it's a pivotal moment in their literacy development. They can now make sentences and write down their thoughts... something that they get super excited about! We have a lot of different sentence starters that students can use to write in their journals. This will be a permanent literacy centre that students can visit daily :)
Lara wrote a note to her friend Nevaeha. So awesome!
Some writing initiated by Ashlyn!
Izze's writing about being V.I.P. I like you too, Owen!!
Class Inquiry Update
We're all done with volcanoes and are moving on to learning about the world! We will be doing some fun activities to learn about different countries, nationalities, etc. More to come soon!
Look at the Canadian flag Lilly made out of snap cubes- sooo cool!
Fun Photos
Talk about being creative!! Awesome mask!
Our class stuffies like playing dress-up, too!
Playing in their cat house :)
Snow continues to be a big hit, and it makes the room smell so good!
A cake for Miss Pliura - yum!
Experimenting with our paint scrapers at creative!
I hope everyone is doing well. I apologize for the delay on my usual Friday post. I've been feeling a bit under the weather. We're still getting back into the swing of things here in Room 110 after 2 weeks off, and the cold weather has kept us cooped inside for the majority of the day! We hope to get back outside soon so students can let their energy out!
Here is an update on what we did this week!
Rules and Routines
Since our return from the break, some of us are forgetting or choosing not to do our daily 5 jobs. We spent one period going over the 5 jobs we do in the morning before we go to table or carpet activities. I've told students that I am no longer chasing after them for their important bags. We talked about how it's their responsibility to make sure I get it and the importance of handing it. There might be important notes for me, library books to be returned, and have their home reading books exchanged. In order to build more independence, ownership, and responsibility, I will no longer be checking their backpacks for their important bag.
We also spent time going over tidying up our learning centres and what it should look like. For example, picking up 10 blocks and moving them to another part of the carpet is not tidying up. We also discussed how if students see something on the ground that's out of place, that it is a nice thing to do to pick it up and put it away, even if they didn't put it there. We will continue to practice and monitor this!
Literacy Update
Q and U Stick like Glue!
Check out the video below to learn more about q and u! :)
Reading Strategy - Flip Flop Frog!
On Thursday we learned about a new reading strategy. We were introduced to "Flip Flop Frog". He reminds us to try and flip the vowel sounds in a word if it does make sense when sounding it out! Always try the vowel sound first and then the vowel name. This strategy applies to a lot of popcorn and balloon words. For example, when sounding out the word "go", try both vowel sounds for o until you hear a word that makes sense :)
Interactive Writing
We thought we would write a note to Mrs. Benedict's class asking if they would like to come play with us one day! We used our knowledge of popcorn words, balloon words, consonant buddies, and finger spacing to help us. We will deliver it to them next week :)
Further Help with Popcorn Words
Watch this brief video of popcorn words to see a bit more of how we teach them in our classroom and how to help your child remember them at home :)
Carpet Seating Plan
Miss Smith and I have decided that a seating plan on the carpet is necessary. We're noticing some students not paying attention on the carpet because they are distracted by their friends. This is distracting to others and it also prevents them from learning during our important literacy, math, and character education lessons. We're going to try it out for a bit to see how it works :) Report Cards
Report cards are sent home on February 12th. Report cards in Kindergarten are quite different than other grades. Students don't receive any grades or 'marks'. They just receive comments. Report card comments are based on formal assessments (DRA), informal assessments (reading with them during learning centres), and daily observations. The following will be reported on for Term 2 report cards (Term 1 was parent observations).
Subject Area - Teacher Commenting
Personal and Social Development - M. Pliura
Language and Literacy Skills - M. Pliura
Mathematics - M. Pliura
Science and Technology - M. Pliura
Health - M. Pliura
Physical Education - D. Lane
The Arts (Visual) - M. Pliura
The Arts (Drama and Music) - M. Moore & M. Barber
Report cards are not meant to shock you, but validate what has already been communicated. I would love to sit down with you after report cards go home to discuss celebrations, concerns, and next steps :)
The Thinking Corner
We have recently implemented what we call "The Thinking Corner". This corner will have multiple purposes, but I thought I'd share with you the first two we've discussed as a class.
Time Out- Although it may not be the best way to prevent a child from doing something, when you have 30 little ones to watch over, sometimes it's your only option. We will be sending students to the "Thinking Chair" when they aren't following the class rules. This will a) keep other students safe and b) allow that student to think about what they were doing and how they could have done it better.
What Should I Do? - As a class, we've learned about a couple of things we can do when someone is bothering us. In an ideal world, asking someone to stop would result in them stopping. This, of course, doesn't always happen. On Thursday, Miss Smith and I modelled what to do when one of us wasn't sharing. Even after "using my words", Miss Smith still wouldn't share her iPad with me, so I decided to play with someone else who would be willing to share with me. We have a print out of our W.A.I.T strategies in a picture frame to help remind students of what to do in a social problem.
Our Current Inquiry
As some of you may have guessed from our last post, we've been interested in soccer lately, and countries that have soccer teams. It's been a big hit with both the girls and the boys!
We used media resources to design our own soccer field for our K'nex soccer players!
Designing a class flag!
We cut out some paper jerseys and told students that they could make their own soccer jerseys! It was nice to see some of our boys join us at creative :)
We've decided to take this interest in soccer and world teams to begin to learn more about countries, and specifically our heritage. How fun would it be to have a heritage day and learn about our home countries!? Lara found Turkey in our flag book!
Vienna, Juliette, and Courtney took an interest in looking at our new world map to try and find Canada!
We broke out the world map puzzle. Students loved it! We are excited to do more learning using the topic of the world and countries :)
Learning Naturally through Play
It's always so exciting to see how you can naturally incorporate learning during student play. No matter what students are doing, there are always ways to incorporate language, math, communication, and social experiences. Yesterday, we caught Lily, Lilly, and Izze play a matching game using some of our loose parts. We didn't even suggest the idea to them! I sat down with them to see what they were doing :)
The goal of the game was to find the matching loose parts under the bottle caps. Here are some things we were able to see during this game:
Planning: Students creating an activity that incorporated memory
Knowledge of 1-1 correspondence: Students demonstrated 1 to 1 correspondence, meaning that only 1 loose part could go under one bottle cap
Knowledge of even numbers: In order for each bottle cap to have a match, students recognized that each bottle cap needed a "friend"
Ability to count: Students counting loose parts after the game to see how many points they had
Knowledge of more or less: Students understood that the person with more points meant that they had won (ex. I had 10 points and Lilly had 6. I asked, "By how many more points did I win than you?" After calculating it in her head, Lilly responded with "4!"
Co-operation: Students working together and playing fairly
What an awesome example of ways we can incorporate our learning during play. We can assess the same knowledge we would by doing a worksheet. Which one do you think is more meaningful to students?
Guest Speaker - Crafting!
On Friday, Nevaeha's mom joined us to share about her love of crafting! She told us that we can create anything if we used our imaginations! She showed us a lot of different costumes she's made. Afterwards, we got the opportunity to do some crafting ourselves! Students got the chance to make snow using baking soda and hair conditioner! It really felt like real snow, and our room smelled amazing!! She also brought in aprons for each student that I will send home on Monday and some more supplies for our creative centre. Thank you!
Weekly Pictures
Here are some random pictures we captured this week! :)
Updates and Reminders
Friday, January 23rd is a PA Day. No school :)
Please remember to send in utensils for your child's lunch, especially spoons! Also, please put all milk tickets in your child's lunch bag so it's ready for them at lunch.
Information about Family Literacy Day will be going home this week.
Thank you for your continued support! Have an awesome weekend :)
