Happy New Year! I hope the new year is treating each of you well! We are well on our way to pushing through and speeding up our learning process with the start of the third quarter. As we begin the 3rd quarter/2nd semester, Kindergarten wil lbegin reading books for AR testing at home as well as begin having Math Attack homework. We will also begin a morning handwriting page to better our handwriting skills which will improve our skills and make our handwriting neater in appearance. For AR Reading, there is no set list of books to read. Most books you have at home or check out at the county library will have a test that accompanies them. Most importantly, your son/daughter has the ability to check out 2 books from our school library each week. The librarians work really hard at helping the students pick out level appropriate books for them to read. These books will ALL be AR books and will have a test for them in the system as long as the book has a green sticker on the side. ALL AR books from our school library that your child will check out have green stickers on the side. Your child is allowed to bring home one book each week to read. When he/she is ready for an AR test, please send the book back to school and I will give him/her the test over the book. The students can then switch out thier library books and take home their 2nd book to read anfd return to school for a test. Ultimately, each studetn should be able to take at least 2 tests a week. Studetns should read and take at least 5 AR tests each for both the 3rd and 4th quarters. They can read and test above that though to help build thier computation skills and love for reading. Math Attack is a 5 minute a night (Monday-Thursday) piece of homework that reinforces Math Skills being taught at school to keep the skills fresh in the student's brains. When they have completed the homework, please check, sign and have them put back in thier folders to return to school the following day. The easiest piece of homework they will ever have! Some students still need to practivce counting to 100. We have been practicing twice a day since the beginning of school to count to 100 and we will stop the repetitive practice after that so that we can move on to harder and more critical skills. Please work with your child if he/she cannot yet count to 100 to master this skill. iwill keep assessing those who still need the extra practice until they pass the assessment. Along the same note, some of the students are having a hard time recognizing partivcular letters and numbers in isolation as well as relaying to me the sound that certain letters make. I will reassess the students again in the coming days and send home another detailed note on wehat specifics need to be practiced. Knowledge of all capital, and lowercase, letters as well as the sounds is very critical when it comes to learning how to read. We need to smooth this foundation before pushing the student into learning to read as then they will beigin to struggle more and I would like to see all studetns be successful readers and not struggle. Also, please continue to practice the sight word flashcards sent home with you at Parent/Teacher Conferences. I will continue to assess each students' knowledge of these. When I feel they have comfortably passed the first set, I will send home the second set for them to begin learning. This is a critical skill to build on at home as our reading Series covers them periodically and I am doing my best to work around that to speed up the learning process of the classroom to enable all studetns to become stronger readers and be ready for 1st grade. I will keep you updated on the process of Kindergarten as new topics arise and we continue to learn new and exciting things! |
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