The First 9 Weeks

We are half way through the first 9 weeks of kindergarten! This year is going to FLY by. I wanted to update you on what the children are working on this 9 weeks. With the new Common Core Standards each has some "Big Ideas" that encompass what will be taught during that quarter. So, here they are for Language Arts and Math.

Language Arts:

• Students know how books work.
• Students know how to use oral language to express their own or respond to other's ideas.
• Students know ideas expressed orally can be recorded as written text which can be read.

Math:

• Students understand that the world is made up of shapes that have identifiable attributes that do not change based upon position, orientation, or number.
• Students understand that the names of number symbolically represent objects and each successive name refers to a quantity that increases by one.

Please let me know if you have questions about what is being taught during your child's school day.

On Friday I sent home some papers showing you your child's progress so far in kindergarten. I hope that these were easily understood. Sometimes it is hard to relay information about progress because we use some difficult terms to understand (even for me). Please let me know if you have any questions about your child's progress.

This week (starting 9/17) we will start interventions for any child needing them. For literacy this will start with letter identification. Our goal for the first 9 weeks is for the students to identify 50% of the uppercase letters and 50% of the lowercase letters. I will be working with groups of students to help master this. Please work with your child at home identifying any letters they do not know. Focusing on one letter at a time until it is mastered is the best way to do this.

I hope you all had a great weekend!