Week of 9/9

Responsive Classroom
We continued to build our classroom community in a few different ways this week. I introduced the greeting component of our morning meeting. We will start each day this way. Daily greetings help us get to know one another's names, practice using an appropriate voice volume and making eye contact...all while building teacher and peer relationships. We practiced a new greeting each day this week - ask your child to describe their favorite one to you!
We worked on our Quiet Time routine, too. At the end of each day, students participate in quiet time to help wind down from a busy day of learning. Choices during this time include drawing, reading or using iPads. The expectations are to use a Level 0 voice and stick with whichever choice they have made for the entire time.
We also built a set of classroom expectations this week. Students brainstormed ways to be safe, responsible, respectful and kind in our classroom. After creating our rules, they took turns demonstrating what each rule looks and sounds like. We also read a couple of stories to help reinforce the importance of following rules - Do Unto Otters and What If Everybody Did That?

Literacy
We kicked off the week with our first formal Writing Workshop. Our workshop time will always include listening to a story, brainstorming ideas for writing, participating in shared writing and independent writing time. At the end of the week, we will usually have time for an Author Share so students can hear one another's work. Eventually, students will learn how to give appropriate feedback on each other's writing. This week, we wrote "I like" stories. Students were reminded to begin each sentence with an uppercase letter, end each sentence with a period and to write the sounds they could hear in each word.

Math
Our focus in math was on counting and addition. Students played Build It - a game in which partners took turns turning over a number card and building the number on ten frames. It was important for them to understand that a teen number was "10 and some more." They learned how to play an addition game called One or Two More. Again, partners took turns turning over a card and deciding to add one or two to that number. Then, they had to cover the sum on a BINGO-style game board. We also practiced counting by ones with our Start With... Get To routine and an activity called Draw 20 (please see the photo).

Upcoming Dates

• Our first early release is Wednesday, September 25th. Students will be dismissed at 12:35pm. If your child will have a different dismissal routine on this day, please let me know in advance. For families that send their children to Rec, please let me know if they have signed up for the special Rec program for that day.
• Skillin's Academic Open House is Thursday, September 26th. Look for more information in red totes next week!

Thank you,

Mrs. Bradstreet