Week 2

With the close of our second week of school we are now in full swing!  We have eight days under our belts and routines are beginning to settle in.  So too, are the individual personalities that will shape our classroom community.  Next week will be our first full week of school.   If your student was tired at the end of four days, you can imagine five days will be exhausting.  The good news is that it will improve and our child will soon adjust to the new demanding schedule that kindergarten brings. 

This week we continued to build on our routines.  We added signing in at the beginning of the day and signing up for choice/explore time, which helps with some with classroom management.  Students still have free choice to visit any center, but there is a limit on the number of visitors at one time.  We also began conversations around Good Choices and Poor Choices.  This work will lay the foundation for our classroom rules which we will establish next week. 

You may have heard that students are working to earn Lobo Loops (bracelets).  When students are caught making a good choice / following rules they earn a loop.  At the end of the day, these are collected.  When we fill our container we will earn a classroom reward. When we have community meetings they will be collected into a school wide collection in order to earn a school reward.

Thursday, students worked on their Hopes and Dreams for Kindergarten.  These will be displayed in our classroom and we will refer back to them over the year.  Mid-year, students will create new goals for the remainder of the school year.

In literacy we read many books and began laying the foundations for writer's workshop and reader's workshop.  We also learned about our handwriting lines and practiced writing letter t on white boards and in our handwriting notebooks. 

In math we learned about the number 2 (two) and began unit on in our math program.  This week our lessons focused on the concepts of alike and different.   During math students have been practicing with independent work while participating in math stations (rotation)

Our Social Studies Theme is All About Me.