Room 4
April Newsletter
I hope that everyone had a fun and/or restful Spring Break! Please see the end of this newsletter for important upcoming dates and information.
March Events
- In March, we had a mysterious visitor who left little green footprints all over the room. You can read about him in one of our class take-home books. Students shared stories about what the leprechaun did at their homes.
- Students heard the stories Mike’s Kite and Where Do Balloons Go? then drew a picture about where they would like to go if they could fly anywhere like a kite.
- Students saw a presentation by Officer Phil and learned about how to be safe at home and in school.
- We joined the classes in our family to listen to a story called The Great Kapok Tree that taught us about the community of animals that live in just one tree. We talked about our theme, Responsibility, and wrote about we could do here at school to be more responsible.
Everyone in the class has had a chance to be our Super Student of the week. I would like to applaud all of the students for the work they did on making and presenting their individual posters. We enjoyed getting to know each person and I think that he or she enjoyed the moment in the spotlight.
Math
In Math, we continued to work on combining and separating groups, writing number sentences to solve story problems, and teen numbers. You might not remember the snowstorm that we had in March, but our class had a few snowball fights! We made snowballs by reading a numeral that was written on a sheet of paper, crumbling that paper into a ball, and then adding it to the snowball pile for our team. Once all of the snowballs were “made” we had a “fight.” After so much indoor weather, we enjoyed a chance to get a little noisy.
During the next month, we will explore measuring length, width, volume, weight, money, and time. Students will be discussing ways to measure and be encouraged to use words such as tall, high, height, length, longer, shorter, holds more, holds fewer/less, estimate, area, grow, change, first, next, and last.
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Language Arts
Phonics - In the Open Court Phonics program students continue to learn new letter sounds. After a sound is learned, students bring home the letter-sound story in two ways: 1.) on a small card that can be added to his/her collection on the ring, and 2.) the story is on the worksheet where the student has highlighted the target letter. The cards are great to use for practice. The Decodable take-home books use words with the taught sounds as well as the known high-frequency words. Although students have read these books at school, please encourage them to read the books to others at home.
We are working on using the letter sounds that we know to segment sounds in words /c/, /a/, /t/ and to blend sounds to make a word. Students are also learning to use their knowledge of the alphabetic principle (letter-sound connections) to read unknown words and to write words.
One activity that they like is when I put two similar words on the board such as pot and pat, then ask “Which one says pat?” After a student comes up to circle the word, I ask, “Then what does this (other) word say?” This demonstrates how they can use their knowledge to read words in text. Another favorite activity is “people words.” I call three or four students up to the front and give each a letter sound. Then I tell them the word that they should make. They do this by positioning themselves in the correct order so that when they say their sounds in sequence, we can blend these sounds to make the target word.
Reading Groups –Thank you for your support in reading the Reading Group Take-Home books with your student. These are the books that come home in the large plastic envelopes. Please remember to write the name of the book and initial the recording form, then return the book in the envelope. Your initials let me know that the book has been read. Otherwise, I will return it in the student’s backpack. Some of the books have a black and white paper copy that will also be in the envelope and that students may keep at home. These are great practice!
Writing - Students have been working hard on their non-fiction animal books. These are the books that will be permanently bound by our PTO volunteers. Books will be presented to the students and their families at our Writing Celebration.
UPCOMING DATES TO REMEMBER
A flyer was sent home in backpacks just before the Spring Break about the Kindergarten Spring Informance which will take place during the regular music class period. During this informance, you can observe the students learning and growing in music class as they do every week. Check below for dates and times. Due to space limitations, each student is allowed to invite 2 adults.
 The kindergarten field day is scheduled for Wednesday, May 21. More information is forthcoming, but students should prepare to wear sneakers and sunscreen.
Kindergarten students who plan to attend either Ryerson or Island school next year will go to the respective schools for a short visit on Monday, June 9. Students who plan to attend Jeffrey will visit first grade classrooms here.
Please contact me if you have any questions or concerns.
Ruth Smerek
smerekr@madison.k12.ct.us
YEAR-END
KINDERGARTEN EVENTS
Thurs., May 8th -
AM Class Full Day Experience (no school for PM class)
Mon., May 12th -
PM Class Full Day Experience (no school for AM class)
Thurs., May 15th -
AM Class Music
Informance (9:15 -9:45) followed by the Class Writing Celebration (9:45 – 10:15)
Fri., May 16th -
PM Class Writing Celebration
at 1:30 followed by the Music Informance (2:00 – 2:30)
May 21st -
Field Day
June 9th -
Kindergarteners visit 1st Grade
June 17th -
Last day of school for all Kindergarteners.
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