January Newsletter

I'm feeling particularly on top of things right now, having just finished the January newsletter. Here it is for your reading pleasure:

January 2014 Newsletter for Room 202

Please let me know if there are any oversights or omissions. And, as always, if you have questions, please let me know and I'll do my best to answer them.

Thursday is Library this week,  as well as the Holiday Sing Along.  The assembly begins at 9:00 am. Kinders will perform at 9:50, but won't be there for the rest of the performances.

Happy Holidays!

We've been busy making and doing this past week, as we move towards the Winter Break. I think both the Morning and Afternoon concerts were a success, but unfortunately, I didn't manage to take any photos during either event myself. Happily, Abbey's mom sent along a panoramic that she took of the students at the concert, which I'm eager to share with you.

This week, we've finished off our star ornaments and sent them home. Though Mr. Zippy may never recover from all the glitter, I hope you enjoy them. We've also been making ornaments with oranges and cloves. They look neat piled all together. Each student has spelled out the first initial of their name and then they've been given creative license to add other decorative features. Many are finding the cloves a bit "picky" , but most seem to enjoy the scent. Those are being sent home as they finish. 

Then Wednesday is the big day, because we're decorating our gingerbread men.  The students are very excited. I've baked them and just hope none crack before their debut. Thanks very much to the parents who're coming in to help ice tomorrow: Nancy and Joe in the afternoon and Tara and Olivia in the morning. Your support really makes things like this possible in the classroom.

Thanks really to all the parents: you really make my job so much easier in so many ways, from just supporting your child's learning and independence to those who've taken on Scholastic or sent in Play Doh or other things that support our learning. You've all been incredibly supportive, and I really appreciate your efforts. 

Big Ideas

Today we read The Gingerbread Man. It's the poem for this week and we also read a version of the story in class.

It led to a discussion of rhyming. This is a new concept for many of students and they're still shaky on the concept. For instance, even though "AND" and "BAM" have similar sounds to "MAN", they're not quite rhymes. Of course, it helped our discussion that there are 3 students with the last name "TRAN".

Other words students made with the AN pattern were: FAN, RAN, GRAN and VAN.  We also talked about other rhyming words and patterns, like Mouse/House and Cat/Sat. This is a powerful concept to reinforce when reading and writing with your child, because it helps to build pattern recognition.

Another concept we're currently building is the idea of More and Less. Our question of the day has been related to this idea for some time. When asking "How many letters are in your name?" or "How many people are in your family?", I also place cards with the words "Less", a number between 1 and 10, and "More". It's surprising how tricky this is for many students. Even when they can count to ten, they're often unsure which numbers are more or less.

Today I also placed some shapes in our painting centre to see what would come of it. Here are some of the preliminary results:

Two trees and a constellation

What I like about this one is that she used the outine she'd painted and filled it in in a contrasting colour. 

This is a butterfly.

Error on PM Christmas Concert

Dear Parents,

First of all, my apologies. On the class newsletter, I wrote down the incorrect time for the Afternoon concert. It is actually at 1:30 pm  on December 13th. The Morning concert is still on Thursday, December 12th at 9:30 am.

I've been busy learning all about different family traditions through our show and share theme this month. So far we've talked about Eid, seen Dreidels and Menorahs, looked at Elf on the Shelf, eaten some pomegranates, admired some ornaments, and read The Grinch and The Polar Express. I look forward to hearing about many more celebrations in the next two weeks.

We've also been busy learning about Goliath, our pet Newt. Apparently, newts are like small salamanders and their skin must always be moist. The salt from our skin can hurt them, so we can't pick him up. We've noticed that he likes to hide on the log and also talked a lot about why salamanders must be sneaky: with poor eyesight, no claws and slow swimming, they need to protect themselves from predators. Although they are nocturnal, some of our students still think Goliath might be scared of the dark as well. Goliath's skin is slippery to help him slip out of predator's hands and he can regrow a body part (like a leg, tail or even an eye) if he does get caught.

Here's Goliath, looking out at the classroom. Here you can see his orange underbelly.

Students are using my modelled writing to begin their own letters.

It's always interesting to see how students integrate the things you bring to the class. Many have been playing being teacher, but this above is new. We are continuing in many of the same centres, but thanks as well to Heather, we have new outfits for George and the other babies. Students have been keeping busy in the house centre, trying on all the new clothes. 

Have a great weekend!

Lisa Goegan

Hot off the presses...

Dear Parents, 

Here it is, your December Newsletter for Room 202!

Our show and share focus is traditions. Ania and Kai get to do show and share on Monday. Ijaz and Ella get to share on Tuesday. The rest will have to click this link or wait until your copy comes home, hopefully tomorrow.

December is a short month due to the Winter Break so not everyone will get a chance this month. But we hope to double up in future months!

 I am away Friday, but will leave copies for the supply to hand out.

Have a great weekend!

Lisa Goegan

Building, Comparing, Measuring.

Dear Parents,

I'm working feverishly to finish the final touches on the December newsletter, but we have confirmed dates for the Christmas concert: December 12th for the AM classes and December 13th for the PM classes. The morning concert should begin at 9:30 am and the afternoon concert will start around 2:30 pm.

I also feel like there's been so much going on in the past couple of weeks. I know I've spoken to many of you during parent teacher interviews, but as I look back on our structures theme, I'm amazed at some of the castles and other structures that have been built. It's easy to lose track of the broader picture in the day to day.

So here are some images. First, many of you have asked about our pumpkin. It's quite disgusting: all moldy and falling in on itself. The decorative gourds, on the other hand, have dried out and rattle when shaken. They're also much lighter than they were. This has led to much weighing and questioning about why certain things rot and other things dry.

 Because we were starting a structures unit, I was very excited when I saw that a tree around the corner was being trimmed. I enlisted the help of several students and made several trips to bring some of the wood over to the kindergarten yard for us to build with. However, mostly, the long thin strips got used as "marshmallow sticks" and the more irregular pieces were co-opted for small imaginary campfires. Eventually, we moved the wood out of the yard because we were worried that eventually someone might make a not so imaginary fire after dark. But we did have some good exploratory play. In the photo below, you can see the boundaries we've marked with the woodpile and some triangular forms in the back, using the fence as a wall.

 We've also been looking at the way movement works using this ramp. It's a complicated process, because there's several stages. The object has to be small enough to fit in the ramp, but big enough to ring the bells at the bottom. It has to move fast enough to keep going, but not so fast it flies out of the ramp itself. Below are several steps of this investigation:

First, we tried rolling objects from the house centre. 

Next we tried using different balls or beads.

Finally, we decided to make our own balls out of play doh and see what happened.

We've been measuring in other ways too. We have a growth chart: 

Tallest to smallest

Baby George is very short

And we've been putting the balance scale to work as well:

The balance scale works like a teeter totter. Two students practice with washers and scales.

Students investigate how to balance the scale.

Finally, we've used fliers to consolidate our understanding of how a balance scale works.

Next steps will be looking more at length and different units of measure. 

In literacy, we've been focusing on Robert Munsch stories. Many of my students really enjoy his books because they are often funny. We've also been learning about the kinds of characters and situations his books are likely to involve--often children are the main characters and they make a mess of things that needs to be fixed. Favourites here include: Purple, Green and Yellow; Mud Puddle; Thomas's Snowsuit and David's Father. Opinions on A Promise Is A Promise are more mixed: Lily likes it because it's scary, but other students prefer his more humorous books. 

  

Sorry for the extra long post!

Our calendar should be home before weeks' end. Tomorrow is library. Happy first snow!

Love, 

Ms. Goegan

Little Monsters!

I thought this had posted last week, but apparently not. Library this week will be on Thursday. And, in breaking news, we're just finalizing the dates and times for the holiday concerts. They'll definitely be on the December newsletter, but I should be able to post them by the end of the week.

Next, I thought I'd show you some highlights from our most recent art made from Rorschach-blots. We folded the paper and smushed the paint around to create the base for these, then applied beads, feathers, string, marker, paper, and google-y eyes to add the finishing touches. Some of them have such personality!

This one took me a while to get because it's a side view. The monster is flying and there's a sad person running away in the bottom.

James' monster looks like an elephant to me.

This student was very carefully placing beads along the line of symmetry and was very excited about the different shapes of the beads: stars, hearts, circles.

Izaiah was excited about the symmetry involved. His painting is of a LADY monster and a SEAL monster. They are dating, apparently. 

Hunter's monster reminds me of a chicken

The application of beads creates a pattern along the bottom of the page

Our Classroom Community

Before I forget to remind you, tomorrow is Library!

At the beginning of the year, my newsletter introduced you to Ms. Fenton (the gym teacher), Ms. Greenwood (the music teacher) and Mr. Hodan (the librarian) and in past posts here, you may also have caught glimpses of me and Ms. Fish.

We also have a weekly volunteer in the classroom named Jeff, who is a parent at the school. He plays guitar and leads some songs for the students. I rode home today singing the Tomato song (mostly) under my breath, so I'm sure that you've heard snippets of this one too. I will also admit to a having moment today listening to them all sing "You Are My Sunshine". It was very sweet.

In addition to that, we've started working with Reading Buddies. In the afternoon, we've partnered with Ms. Oseghale's Gr. 4 class. The morning was more challenging to arrange, due to scheduling, so a smaller number of students are coming in to visit us during their recess. What I love about Buddy programs like these is that students get that precious one on one time and both sides seem to love the interactions. The older students are very sweet and protective of their buddies and, well, you can see the engagement in learning.

Students read together in the cubby area

The quiet centre is transformed into the pillow centre.

I also wanted to touch on the reading program I sent home today. I know this is another thing to remember, but I've tried to keep it simple by making the switch every Monday. You received a poem that we'll practice reading in class and I encourage you to read it at home with your child as well. Each week, you should receive a different poem, based on the concepts we're looking at in class.

If you are an SK family, you also received a short book to practice and read aloud together. These books are very basic levelled texts, so you may notice a fair bit of repetition. This is good! Students learn through practice and will hopefully build some sight words as you gradually release the reading of the books over to them.  

Yours in learning, 

Ms. Goegan

All the little pumpkins

It may not surprise you to learn that I got very few good photos of the students in their actual Halloween costumes and that most of the ones I did get are blurry. Students were very excited yesterday! Please feel free to send me your photos, especially if you got some good shots during the parade. :)

In lieu of that, I thought I would post about some of the pre-Halloween learning that happened around our class pumpkins.

Here's an example of a daily message. Many of our daily messages reinforce curriculum, like this one does. Please also note the missing letters, which we have students fill in to build sound/letter recognition.

Here's a recent overview of our science centre contents.  You can see the charts of foods that grow, and the pumpkin's life cycle, with students' drawings added, as well as our uncarved pumpkin, celery food colouring experiment, and various leaves and stones brought in by students to examine.

Here's our chart, examining the difference between 5 and 11. Some students had a hard time figuring out which number was higher, so we modelled it by counting, graphing and drawing.

We tried to get students to create pumpkin faces out of blocks,  but most were more inspired by Picasso than we'd hoped. This group used one of our Halloween stories to help them create a face.

To model what students saw inside the pumpkin, we had them do some art. On the left is a particularly creative JK interpretation. On the right is a more restrained creation, with some writing. We provided pumpkin shapes, leaves, stems, string, pumpkin seeds, and pom-poms and let them go to town.

Gabby's seeds are not so much inside, but there are 24 of them, as she's written on the leaf (pom-poms were not included in the count).

Theo just really liked the big pom-poms.

Here students are beginning to explore whether pumpkins sink or float.

Some students continue the experiment while others go off to find new things to test and look through the magnifying glass some more. 

Here is the inevitable pumpkin soup. Note the creative use of the pine branch from the science centre as a whisk.

Unexpected learning happens through drama as well. The rubber figurines sunk, so the students decided to use the wooden block as a raft to save them. 

Ms. Fish gets students to help her draw the face on the pumpkin before cutting it.

Students stand in front of the graph that helped us choose which face we should carve.

So there you go. Today is Ms. Fish's final day in our classroom and her warm presence will be sorely missed. Many thanks are due to her for taking on pumpkin carving in particular.

In November, I hope to explore point of view in our stories, measurement in math and structures in science, but as these pictures show, a lot of learning happens outside any path I might try to tread.

November Newsletter

Dear Parents,

Here is the November newsletter. Dates for each student's special day are on the calendar attached as is information about October's learning and November's themes.

Here you go:

November Newsletter

*In assigning "special students" I try to take into account both who got 2 special days in previous months, but I apparently forgot to look at our birthday list. I'll do my best to remember in December, but for this month, we'll have two special students on those birthdays. :)

Mathematics in Kindergarten

I'm getting a bit of a late start on this week's blogpost, but I wanted to be sure to remind you all that tomorrow is Library. Please make sure that you've returned any books you have out in order to get a new one. I've put notices in bags today to remind those who may have missed last week's library as well.

Dear Parents,

There are five basic areas of Mathematics study in the Ontario curriculum. In the first term, we've really been focused on building basic numeracy, which means number reognition and counting ability through various counting activities and using our calendar to build number sense.  Still, for each strand, we've already seen evidence of student thinking.

1. Number Sense and Numeration

This student is recreating her phone number in playdoh

This student is counting pumpkin seeds and sorting them into rows of 5.

2. Measurement

These students are using a balance scale to measure how many small balls equal the weight of one large one.

3. Data Management and Probability

Using their name tags, students create a basic graph showing that more students think the pumpkins will float than sink.

4. Geometry and Spatial Sense

Students create a jack-o'-lantern face using foam geometric shapes.

5. Patterning and Algebra

Students create patterns using a variety of manmade ...

....and found materials.

As you can see, when children play and explore, mathematics is naturally a part of that exploration.

This week, we've been focusing on our class pumpkins as part of the lead up to Halloween and I hope to let you see some of that in my post next week.

 Regards,

 Lisa Goegan

Just a quick post...

Dear Parents,

First, two reminders:

1. Library (Day 5) is tomorrow. Please make sure students bring back their books. I know there have been a few kinks with the system, but please bear with us and let me know if there's an issue as soon as possible so I can help resolve it.

2. Photo money is due tomorrow as well. I've been removing photo packages from Mr. Zippy and sending them down to the office as they come in. Regardless of whether or not you have purchased a package,  all students should receive a class photo in the weeks ahead.

Today I asked students to think what I could possibly have inside a paper bag that I let them examine from the outside. I gave them the clue that it was something that started small but would get bigger.

Some of the guesses included:
--a pumpkin (our book was about pumpkins, so many students guessed this)
--pumpkin seeds
--leaves
--a toy train
--a pickle
--some beans
--a baby hippopotamus (I'm pretty sure they meant a stuffed animal, and they were being quite serious about it)

It's interesting how students use some of the information around them to build predictions, but not necessarily all of it. For instance, the bag was much too flat to contain a pumpkin (...and much too dry to contain a pickle.)

The pumpkin seeds have hopefully sparked off an investigation of our two class pumpkins. J brought in a Jack-O'-Lantern for her show and share last week, so perhaps the ending is predictable, but I'm looking forward to seeing what happens anyways.

Next week, I hope to post in more detail about mathematics in our classroom. It will also be Ms. Fish's last week in our classroom. 

Literacy in the Classroom

Dear Parents,

As we move into October, our focus has turned to letter shapes and sounds. I've shown you some of the science activities we've been working on at the school. Many of these include literacy, but learning to read and write is a key focus of our program, so I wanted to give you a little window into all the ways we're working on that in Kindergarten:

First, is the vision of literacy you're probably most familiar with. Today, Ms. Fish, my student teacher, read aloud "The Missing Piece" by Shel Silverstein. You can also see the daily schedule, our calendar and birthday wall, as well as the message of the day, written on the white board. Students read the message of the day along with the teacher. Below, you can see some examples of students taking learning into their own hands.

In these photos, students are playing at the "Teacher Centre", writing their own message of the day and using a pointer to remember the days of the week.

Play Based Learning Opportunities:

These pictures show our recent art project using foam letters. As each child came to the painting centre, an adult asked them to find the letters in their name and sound them out. Some students made patterns with these letters. Some students spelled their name or other names that were important to them. Interestingly, many students spelled backwards, so working on text direction will be important as we move forward with reading. 

We also have letters in our playdough centre right now. This student decided to spell a word he knew without prompting, but mostly students are making cookies  or pasta with the letters in their names. I've heard many students reciting the Patty Cake rhyme. 

In this picture, students are playing with an alphabet fishing game, where they match letters to their upper case or lower case equivalents. We've also been playing memory games with pictures and letter sound matching.

Here are some other examples of student writing, from their journals. Each student will write an entry at least once each week. 

In the left hand journal, the JK student has recounted a story about his picture. In the right hand journal, an SK student has sounded out a word that reflects her picture.

In the left hand journal, the JK student has written a word based on sounding out the word snake. In the right hand journal, the SK student has sounded out a sentence to say: "Rabbit is drinking tea".

: 

Sometimes, writing also happens spontaneously:

Here, students have found clipboards and brought the writing to the carpet. They are drawing and writing about their carpet creations. 

Literacy in kindergarten can look a bit different than it might in other grades because so much of the learning is based on student interest and engagement. I hope that you can see the learning and engagement happening in these pictures too.

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan

P.S. Tomorrow is library! Please remember to bring your books. :)