Tuesday Update - November 18th, 2014

Good evening, everyone!

Here's a brief mid-week update :)

Cold Weather/Winter Clothing Reminder

Please remember to send your child to school with/dressed in the following: warm jacket, snow pants, boots, mittens/gloves, hat, and a scarf. Please label everything. It just makes life so much easier. We are teaching them to be organized by placing their accessories in their backpack so they don't get lost, but sometimes it happens. The HWDSB will put out a cold weather alert if the temperature reaches -15 degrees or below. We will stay inside if this happens.

We've learned a song to help us get dressed for outside play if you would like to sing this song at home too :) It goes to the tune of "The Hokey Pokey".

Raz-Kids

I've looked into the issues with Raz-Kids and the quizzes. I really don't know what has been causing this. It works for me when I log on as Brad Pitt, so maybe it's been fixed now. I'm sorry I can't really help you with this- it's kind of out of my hands :)

Introducing Consonant Blends

Right now during our literacy lessons, we are learning about consonant blends. We will call them "consonant buddies". Consonant buddies are two consonants that when put together make one sound (ex: br). We will be learning the 4 most common consonant blends first. These four blends all have the letter h in them. They are sh, ch, wh, and th. On Monday we learned about sh!

*Note: technically these are digraphs because you can't hear each sound of the consonant, but it doesn't really matter :)

(Taken from "Helping Your Child Learn to Read" by Miss Pliura - Available under the tab "Literacy Support")

Mr. H and his 4 Friends

This is a fun way we teach 4 of the most popular consonant buddies: sh, ch, wh, and th. Mr. H has 4 friends that he hangs out with and when he hangs out with each of these letters, they like to do something different. All of his friends are ladies, and we know ladies come first, so he always comes second in each of these. Each one has a story that helps us to remember them.

Sh: Miss S and Mr. H are good friends. Their favourite thing to do together is to go to the library. One thing they find themselves doing a lot at the library is telling others to be quiet, so together they make the /sh/ sound.

This word has 3 sounds in it. Can your child tell you the 3 sounds in order? Can they draw sound boxes around the letters to help them?

Advanced Decoding Strategies

Decoding is another word for sounding out. Here are some more advanced decoding strategies some of our students are ready to use. We will learn about these eventually, but for now, take a look at some of the ways in which we decode words based on phonetic rules of the English language. You can begin to use these during your reading time at home to help your child :)

Good night!

Friday Update - November 14th, 2014

Hi everyone!

Happy Friday! I thank you for your patience on waiting for a new blog entry. Parent Observations make for a busy week, but I'm glad I can finally share with you what we've been doing over the past week in room 110 :)

Parent Observations

I'm so glad that the majority of you were able to come in and see your child in action. They LOVE having you in and showing you what they do in our room :) They are a great group and I'm so proud of their achievements so far. I hope I was able to answer any questions you had and didn't leave you hanging. If you ever want to chat, just send me a message and I'll call you :) Just like you, I want the best for your child, so please keep communicating with me!

Baby Pictures!

Mrs. Tortola has shared some pictures with us of her new baby girl. What a sweetheart she is :)

Literacy Update -Vowel Sounds & Names

We have finished learning about the 2 sounds that each vowel can make. This is very important to know, as it's the next reading strategy we will learn about. Here is a couple of examples we looked at during our literacy lessons.

Popcorn Words: Round Two

I introduce the popcorn words in different rounds. The first round includes the popcorn words we can sound out using our "Letter Factory" sounds, such as 'it' and 'big'. This round, we are learning about popcorn words we can sound out using Vowel Names. At the end of each of these words, you can hear the vowel name. So I make up a rhyme to help them: all it is is, "M and Y make 'my'" or, "H and E make 'he'. Until we can memorize the popcorn words by sight, it's beneficial for students to know they can sound these words out using the other vowel sound.

The 6 words we introduced are: he, me, we, my, go, no

DRA Update

I have started retesting our SKs to see if they have gone up a reading level since our initial assessments in September. Remember that your child needs to be able to read the entire book independently without any errors/self correct all errors in order to move up to the next level. You can read the first page to them so they can pick up the pattern. I am required to administer DRA for SKs in September, January, and May. However, I know how hard some students have been working and I am eager to see if they've moved :) I hope to start JK DRAs soon as well. Keep practicing that reading every night!!

Raz-Kids Glitches

Some of you have informed me that Raz-Kids has been giving you some issues, especially with the quizzes. I will look into this issue further on the weekend. I apologize for any frustration this may cause you (darn computers!). 

Learning at the Science Centre

This week during learning centres, we had some new learning going on that we were super excited about. Miss Smith found an abandoned birds nest near her house that she brought in to put in our Science and Discovery centre. Students began investigating it and here are what some students answered to the question, "I wonder who lives in the nest? How do you know?"

Milorad: "A bird because she put the dirt in her nest".

Owen: "Bunnies because bunny nests have bigger holes that mouse nests".

Hailey: "A bunny".

Lara: "A bird, a robin maybe".

Nevaeha: "A bird".

Alma: "A bird because I saw a bird flying and it went back to the nest".

Gurshan: "A bird sleeps in here".

Daryl: "A bird because birds live in nests".

Malik:" A bird because a nest is their home".

Alex: "A bird because I saw a bird in a red tree once". 

It's interesting to see the different perceptions students have on whom the nest belongs to. This was a great way to spark some interest and inquire about nature. 

Writing at Learning Centres

This week we saw a lot of students take initiative in writing during learning centres. We loved seeing this! We want students to naturally want to write and express their ideas on paper, so we're so glad the interest is there. We also tried to encourage students to incorporate writing during their play. For example, some of the boys wrote the name of their race car on a post-it note and attached it to their car. I love using writing in authentic ways like this that are of interest to students :)

Patterning Fun

This week we looked at patterns in a bit more detail. Patterning can be a hard concept for students to grasp. A pattern is when certain objects repeat itself. We call this the "core". When the core repeats itself over and over again, it then becomes a pattern. We used our word wands to try to find the core! Students explored different patterns such as basic ones like A, B, A, B and A,A,B. Try patterning some objects you find around the house!

Winter Clothing Reminder

Cold weather is upon us, and with that comes lots of extra outerwear! Please make sure your child is coming to school dressed appropriately with a warm jacket, mittens, hat, etc. Now would be a great time to start practicing getting all of those things on independently! What goes on first? What goes on last?

Updates/Reminders

• Picture retake day is Tuesday, November 18th. Please send a note in to let us know if your child is having their pictures retaken, or else we won't know- thanks!
• Friday, November 21st is a PA Day. No school!
• Next week we will start our new Character Education program, "All Aboard the Friend Ship!" Mr. Giggles is the captain of the ship, and he will teach us how to be a good friend :)
• Please remember to bring in your $2.00 for Crockadoodle ASAP. Thanks!
• We have a drama crew coming in on Thursday November 20th to perform a short play of "The Princess and the Frog" for our primary students. 
• Please remember that if you are picking up your child, you MUST go to the office and sign in and wait for your child outside of our classroom inside the school. We can not have parents/guardians coming in through the Kindergarten pen during nutrition breaks. If I'm not on duty, other teachers won't know who you are. Please understand this is simply and solely for safety reasons. Thank you for your understanding. You must also sign your child out at the office if you are picking them up early, especially if they take the bus. The bus will not leave if students who are apparently at school are not waiting for the bus, and if you don't sign them out, then the secretaries will not know they are gone.

I thank you for your continued support of our program. Without you it just couldn't be done! Here is a really neat creation that one of our students made when we did the leaf craft. Beautiful!

Have a fantastic weekend :)

~ Miss Pliura

Delayed Friday Update! Friday November 8th, 2014

Hi everyone!

I hope everyone is having a nice weekend :) I'm sorry this post is only going up now! I have lots to share with you in this post... so sit down and relax ;)

Exciting News

In case you don't follow me on Twitter or get a chance to read the message board outside of our classroom, Mrs. Tortola had her baby girl on Thursday, November 6th :) She and her husband welcome baby Ava Marie to their family. We are so happy for her and can't wait to see pictures. We hope that she will come visit us with her new baby girl! Congratulations to Mrs. and Mr. Tortola! We wish you the very best on your new journey as a family :)

Popcorn Day

Friday was Popcorn Day!! Popcorn Day is where we introduce the "popcorn words", or, 25 sight words that are crucial to know. These words must be recognized by sight, for many can't be sounded out. Sight words make up 75 percent of texts- crazy! That's why they're so important to know- they "pop" up in our books all the time!

We introduced the song to students which goes to the tune of "Mary Had a Little Lamb". The reason we use a song is help students memorize them. Once they memorize it, they can sing it until they find the word they're looking for. Here is a copy of the popcorn words incase you need another copy :)

When we went off to Literacy centres, we made sure that students were writing, stamping, and making popcorn words! Here are some pictures :)

Great job spelling those popcorn words, boys and girls!

Here's a video of Daryl and Giulia using one of my favourite iPad apps; Word Wizard! You can spell words and it reads it back to you :)

Here's another video of Izze and Alyssa looking for letters to spell popcorn words :)

After recess, we went on a popcorn word scavenger hunt! It was just like an Easter egg hunt, but with popcorn words on rocks! We hid them all throughout the room and everyone was able to find one :)

Now it was time for the fun part- tasting the popcorn! We had students taste four different kinds and then vote on their favourite :) Click on the pictures to enlarge!

 

 

We will be looking at the results from our graph on Monday to figure out which kind was the most popular! 

After our taste testing, we had to quickly tidy up to get ready for our guest speaker. A parent from Mrs. Schmidt's class came in to chat with us, and he was a real life soldier! How cool!

We had some great questions and comments come from our friends :)

"They help fight for the warriors" - Lara

"Why do soldiers work?" - Izze

We learned all about his cool green uniform and even got to learn how to march just like him!! 

Sorting and Counting Fun

Miss Smith and I were super impressed with Juliette's initiative during table activities to sort and count all the mini animals. How awesome! Way to go Juliette :) Once students saw her doing it, they wanted to join in to. Juliette sorted the animals by their colour. What are some other ways we can sort?

Parent Observations

Over the next week, parent observations will be taking place. Please make sure you read the post I wrote about them. If you did not let me know if you read the package, I will send it home for those with observations Tuesday-Friday, for I forgot to for those on Monday. It's just to give you a heads-up of what to look for and when. Our days will be exactly the same as normal- no dog and pony show here! Please remember that if there are multiple families, I will only be able to chat with you for a couple of minutes, but would be more than happy to sit down and talk before or after school one day or give you a shout at home. 

If there is something you are concerned about regarding your child, please have that ready to share with me during parent observations.

Also, please remember that Miss Smith has only been with us for a week, so she is still learning about the students. Thank you!

Important Reminders 

• Remembrance Day assembly will take place on Tuesday. We will receive a class set of poppys. The assemblies are always made Kindergarten appropriate.
• Scholastic orders are due on Friday- they make great Christmas gifts! Remember that buying books through Scholastic helps to raise more money for classroom books. Orders will be submitted on Friday.
• Please don't forget to send in your $2 for Crockadoodle. The extra $2 pays for Crockadoodle to come to the school, as opposed to charging each student $10+ for a bus to travel elsewhere to do it :)
• Picture retakes are on Tuesday November 18th.

I believe that's all for now. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

~ Miss Pliura

Guest Speaker: A Nurse!

Good evening everyone :)

Yesterday we had Marko's dad come visit us and tell us all about his job as a Nurse. He wore his uniform and showed us all of his important tools and students were super interested in what he did :) We got to hold some of the equipment he uses with his patients and we learned that he has 12 hour shifts!

We had some great questions come from our students such as "When do you work?" and "Why do they leave the hospital?" Some great discussion took place and I'm proud to say our class did some excellent attentive listening :) It was the perfect timing for Marko's dad to come in because we just introduced our Doctor's Office Kit at Dramatic Play! They love to pretend that they're doctors and nurses :)

A big thank you goes out to Marko's dad for taking the time to come in and share his job with us. We really appreciate it! Tomorrow, we have a soldier coming in to talk to us. We will share that with you along with all of the exciting events from Popcorn Day tomorrow :)

Until then, Goodnight!

~ Miss Pliura

Tuesday Update - November 4th, 2014

Good evening everyone!

I hope everyone is doing well and having some nice dinner conversations about school today :) I have a couple of things I wanted to share with you!

• Please make sure you read through the "Parent Observation" package (in one of the previous posts) to prepare for next week. It's such a busy day that I probably won't be able to explain the forms to you beforehand. Please let me know when you've read it. 4 parents have let me know so far!
• Scholastic orders for November are due on the 14th. I will submit them on that date and you should receive them a week or so after that.
• Orders for photos are past-due. If you would like to order them, you must speak to the office to see if they can do a late order. If not, you will have to reorder them with retakes. Picture retake day is on November 18th. 
• Gym clothing orders have been delivered. If you have not received yours yet, please let me know and I will pass that message on to Mr. Lane.

I thank those parents who are reading the blog and staying up to date. I know how busy you all are and I'm appreciative that you're so focused on your child and their Kindergarten adventures :)

Here's a brief Literacy update :)

Vowel Sounds vs. Vowel Names

This week is an important week during our Literacy time, because we are learning more about the vowels/"sticky letters". Vowels are important letters! They stick words together... every word and syllable needs one... and they make more than one sound! This week we are learning the two sounds that each vowel makes. We've done A and E so far :) These are called short and long vowel sounds. However, we will refer to them as vowel name and vowel sound. Although they are technically both sounds, vowel name refers to the name of the letter /a/ and vowel sounds refers to the sound that that letter names /ah/. 

We learned that "A can say /ah/ and A can say /a/". 

We learned that "E can say /eh/ and E can say /e/".

This is more directed toward SKs, but so many of our JKs know their letters and sounds that this would be a great next step :)

Accountability during Learning Centres - Moving Forward

We've been having many issues in the classroom with tidying up after ourselves. This is a bit surprising since they blew me away at the beginning of the year with their tidy up skills. During learning centres, students know that they need to clean up certain things before moving to a new learning centre (ex: putting the lids back on Playdoh, cleaning up the sand toys, putting lids on markers, etc.). Lately when I notice centres are messy and no one is there, some students don't take accountability for their mess. In order to not center them out, I let students know that they can tidy it up after I'm done talking, but it's still not happening. Of course by then, plenty of students go clean up the mess even if they didn't make it because they are great helpers :) We wanted to share this with you and let you know that we will be teaching them more about responsibility during our Character Education lessons and will be keeping a close eye on who's following the rules :)

I believe that's all I have to say for now!

Adios :)

~ Miss Pliura

Jr. Dance Team is Back!

Hi everyone!

This post is meant for those who are a part of Gatestone's Jr. Dance Team :) We are back for Year 2! I am so excited to start it up again for another fun year full of awesome performances! There are a few changes happening this year. As a teacher, it's natural for me to reflect on past teaching experiences. So as a dance teacher, here are a couple of things I've reflected on and am changing this year:

New this Year

• As much as I would love for the team to perform in the Winter assembly, last year we didn't have enough time to choreograph our year end routines and had to cram in crazy after-school dance rehearsals just to get them finished. This year, we will be choreographing our year-end routines right from the beginning :)
• Last year we had students dropping out of routines mid-year or even worse, near the end of the year when it was near performance time. This causes much stress within the team since we have to re-do formations. This year, students will be signing a contract that states that they are willing to attend all practices and stick with it. We've given students an opportunity to try out the different styles of dance (jazz, lyrical, hip hop) to see if they like it before they commit to the team. You can view the contract here. I believe that students should take responsibility for their actions, and when they commit to something, they should stick with it. If for some reason a student changes their mind or are finding it too difficult, they should speak with me A.S.A.P.
• Students in Grades 4 and 5 are allowed to join a maximum of 2 dances. Only students in Grade 6 are allowed to join all 3.
• This year, we will have two different types of sessions: choreography sessions and practice sessions. Miss Lo and Mrs. Gould will be helping to run practices. 
• This year we're been invited to DanceFest! DanceFest is an event run by Glendale Secondary School that invites all dance teams to come perform in a competition and participate in workshops with dance professionals. DanceFest takes place on January 8th. Since we won't have our routines done by then, we will be submitting our Jazz routine from last year ("Black and Gold") into the competition, and all other team members are welcome to come watch and participate in the workshop. More details to come soon!

Schedule

Every month, I will be releasing a schedule that states when our rehearsal sessions are. Each student will be given a copy, and a copy will be posted outside of my room, room 110. I will be choreographing 3 different routines this year for students in grades 4, 5, and 6. Here is November's Schedule :) Due to Kindergarten Parent Observations, there will be no practices from the 10th - 14th.

Click Above Image to Enlarge

Songs

Songs have already been chosen and edited. Please make sure your children listen to my versions.

Jazz - "Primadonna"

Lyrical - "Try"

Hip Hop - "A Little Party"

Rehearsals

Rehearsals take place during Nutrition Breaks. We dance for the first 25 minutes and then go back to my room so students can eat their lunches. Students do not need to bring any particular shoes- socks or barefeet are fine. Comfy clothing on rehearsal days is suggested!

If you have any questions, please tweet me or call me at the school and leave a message with the office. Thanks for your support!

~ Miss Pliura

Everything to Know About Parent Observations!!

Hi everyone!

I hope everyone had a great Halloween!

I wanted to post this sooner rather than later. As you know, Parent Observations are coming up in a little over a week. These observations take place of Grade 1-8 progress reports, so they are very important. Here is the schedule for Observations:

Please make sure you arrive promptly :) Remember that if you are coming to an AM session, you may enter through the Kindergarten doors with your child. If you are coming to a PM session, please do NOT enter through these doors (they're locked, anyway). You must go through the front of the school and sign in at the office. Thank you :)

I have created an overview of Parent Observations. Click on the pink text to download the file. Please read through the following document within the next week.

Read Parent Observation Pack Here

As always, let me know if you have any questions. The best way to reach me is on twitter. 

Thanks!

~ Miss Pliura