Ms. Reams' Kindergarten Class
updated on
Sunday, March 19, 2023
Important Dates
3/27-31 Book Fair
3/28 & 3/29–Kindergarten Registration
4/3 Spring Pictures
4/6-10 No School Easter Break
4/11- No School PD Day
4/12 Begin ABC Days (see information below for more info)
4/12 A Day Ava H, Ava S.
4/13 B Day Bryson
4/14 C Day Codey, Corbyn
Specials Schedule
Monday: Art
Tuesday: Music
Wednesday: PE
Thursday: Library
Friday: Counselor
Snack Schedule
3/20 Lilly
3/27 Lyric
4/3 Sophia
4/12 Molly
4/17 Milo
4/24 Nikolai
5/1 Ava H.
5/8 Fallon
5/15 Donations
I am always here!
I am always here to answer any questions or to talk about any concerns you might have. Please always feel welcome to message me or email me. Dojo is the best way, but you can also email me at kreams@bpsk12.net
Welcome!
This will be our central hub for information. This is where you will find links to all of the important information for our class. Please look through the website and links to see where important information can be found.
Moments from this week.....
It is hard to find individual moments from the week because there have been many moments that have been special. I love being with them so much. From our conversations during read alouds, to playing soccer with them at recess, to listening to them giggle, to listening to them tell stories about things that they are doing like soccer practice and getting to new swim levels. I LOVE spending my days with them.
We had so much fun learning this week. Math was a lot of fun because we incorporated music and acting into our math lessons. We used the songs 5 little monkeys and 5 green and speckled frogs to learn about subtraction. There were 5 monkeys jumping on the bed and 2 fell off. How many were left. We would act it out and then they would draw a picture of what happened and write the equation to go with it. It was a lot of fun watching them act out the stories.
We had a lot of fun with St. Patrick's Day this week. We talked about all the reasons why we are lucky. We read a book called Leprechaun's gold and talked about what means more to us than gold (of course, they knew my answer right away....THEM!). We made a torn paper rainbow and had rainbow sherbet floats. They thought they were the BEST TREATS EVER!!!!
ABC Celebration: Beginning April 12
The end of the year is exciting, but it can also be a stressful or sad time for some. (I definitely am not a fan of the end of the year....it does make me sad!!! But we won't talk about that right now. Right now, I just want to soak in all the time with the kids I can.) Rather than counting down to the end of the year, I do an ABC celebration. Each day we celebrate all we have accomplished this year with a special activity that starts with the letter of the day. Furthermore, if your child's name begins with that letter, they are the student (or students) of the day. They get to wear a crown and bring in show and tell. So instead of counting down the days we have left, we will get to spend the end of the year celebrating each other!!! This will be a very important area on the website. I will put the date, which letter we are doing and if the child needs to bring anything special (such as a beach towel or hat, etc.for that day's celebration). If nothing is put down, then your child doesn't need to bring anything. But you will need to check to see if it is your child's day to bring a show and tell.
Show and Tell information: Students can bring in 1 item. These items do stay in their backpacks and go on buses. Please make sure that if they bring something to show that it is nothing valuable that can be broken and that it is school appropriate and nothing with a toy weapon. Items need to fit inside backpacks. If they want to share something valuable, please either send me a picture or video on dojo and the child can share it that way.
Math
We have been working a lot on number pairs, addition, and subtraction. Our first goal is to work on the concepts of addition and subtraction. Telling addition and subtraction stories. I can put these two numbers together to make a larger number. Or if I have a bigger number I can take some away from it. We are not working on fluency or seed at this time, but understanding the concept. The tool we will use to begin is called a number bond. It is a visual representation that two numbers go together to make a larger number. It shows the relationship between addition and subtraction. We have been working a lot on using manipulatives to break a whole into two parts, putting the numbers in the number bond, and then using the number bond to create a number sentence We started using colors to help us understand number bonds. In art, we learned yellow and blue make green. So in our number bonds, we have the two parts colored yellow and blue and when you put them together to make the whole, we have green.
Sometimes we use these videos as a warm up for a math before we do our lesson. I am sharing this video for you to see how we use number bonds to learn about addition and subtraction. This isn't homework. Just sharing one of our resources.
Letter Identification and Formation
I found this link that shows how we practice letter identification. They will say the letters at the same time as the video. We practice this every day. But can be another way to practice at home. I also shared a video for letter formation for fundations. This is how we teach students to write their letters. I wanted to share it so you would know the language and prompts they hear when we write our letters. Right now we repeat the sayings over and over until they internalize them. I am also sending home a packet that has the letter formations for you. One thing we are working on is identifying b and d. It is not a concern if they get it reversed, but it is something we are working on to strengthen their knowledge of letters.
Letter formation resource (video to show formations)
Reading Skills
Phonological awareness is one of the biggest skills we work on in kindergarten. It is an important building block to being able to read. It is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the sounds in words. These are skills we have been working on. This is a skill that everyone can continue to work on. It get progressively more difficult. It may begin with identifying the first sound, or the last sound in words. As we get more challenging it will ask students to say the word sit without the s, or to say the word my but change the m to a b. I am always here if you have any questions.
Heggerty and Phonemic Awareness: This is one of the curriculums we use to explicity teach phonemic awareness. This link are the newsletters from this curriculum.
Guide to Phonological Awareness article
7 activities for phonemic awareness
If you go to this goals page, it will have lots of quick fun videos for the kids to help kids both with phonemic awareness, but also letter identification and letter sounds. It also has extra practice with blending sounds to read words and segmenting or taking apart words into individual sounds.
Setting Goals
Goals in the third quarter are going to be more individually based. Each student will meet with me at the beginning in January and we will set individual goals. One for reading, writing, and math. For instance, one of our end of the year goals is to count to 100. If your child has reached this goal, then we will set a goal to count by 10s to 100. or we may set a goal for number writing, or number identification. I will send home their goal paper after we set them. Once they meet their goal they get to ring the bell and put a sticker on their goal bucket. Just becuase they have a goal does not mean they are struggling. I tell the kids that we are always learning and always setting new goals. Also, some goals may be more time consuming than others. For example a writing or reading goal may take more time to master than a math goal. If you ever have a question or concern please reach out. This website will be a great resource for goals. If you go to my goals link below, it has videos and games that help with reaching goals. I will also provide information on how to work on goals.
WIN time, Independent Work Time
WIN stands for What I Need. One of my objectives this year is for students to learn that my job is to keep them safe and help them learn. But that what they need to learn may be different from others in the class. So my job is to find out What I Need. This means students may be working on different things at the same time to work on what they need. Students usually get a pretty good understanding of this with a lesson I will be doing this week. I pull up a bunch of students. I have one pretend to be hungry. One pretend to be sad. One pretend to be sick. And one pretend they fell down and scratched their knee. Then I give everyone a band aid. They laugh!!!! I ask why? Because the hungry student doesn't need a band aid....they need food. The sad student doesn't need a band aid...they need a hug or a friend. The only one a band aid with help in the one that got hurt.
This comes to play during independent work time. Because students will be working on different tasks to give them what they need to meet goals. We will be working really hard to learning how to make the choices to help them meet goals.
I do give students opportunities to make choices. One of my jobs is to help students learn how to make good choices. But if I don't give them opportunities to make choices, they won't learn how to do that. I have to provide them with opportunities to do that. Sometimes they won't make a good choice and we will have to talk about it. But that is how they learn to make good choices. During independent work time, I will guide them for example by saying they have to play a game that works on letters and sounds, but then they get to choose the game they will play. Because they are getting to make the choice of what game they want to play, they are usually very engaged and on task because they chose it.
I have also been talking to students that I can go down one road. I can go down the fun road or I can go down the behavior road. If I go down the fun road, they have to focus on their behaviors so I can focus on the fun. If I have to focus on the behaviors then I can't focus on the fun. This has really seemed to work. I don't have to focus on a lot of behaviors during the day. When something does happen I just ask them what they want me to focus on. They are doing so so good!
Classroom News
Mrs. Jackson has a LOT of important information in her newsletter! In addition to her email, I will share the link here in case you need it.
Click on the newsletter link above for my newsletter. This is where I will share specific information about what we are learning.
Curriculum Resources: This is where I will provide information about our curriculum.
Sound walls
Sound walls are a tool we will use to learn sounds. When we learn a letter, we will learn what our mouth will look like. We will talk about the placement of our lips and tongue, as well as talk about what kind of air movement we use. For this week we talked about the letter t. It is a stop sound. It doesn't keep going. Your tongue goes behind your teeth and your mouth is opened slightly. We put our hand on our sound box (our throat) and it does not vibrate, so it is an unvoiced sound. These are all concepts that the students will soon be able to verbalize. This is a new tool we are using this year and will help them when learning to spell and read words. I took a picture of our sound wall before I covered each letter with a picture of a lock. Each week we will unlock a new letter. We even have a magical wand to help us. Students have their own mirror to look at to make sure their mouth is making the right movement. We also then do sky writing to learn how to write the letter. The kids know about the sky line, plane like, grass line and plane line. You will get a brochure for each letter we learn every week.
This is a video that gives an example of what a lesson looks like.
Reading lessons
I teach reading in a variety of ways. We learn reading skills (such as phonemic awareness, phonics, blending, segmenting) in whole group through pride time and fundations. I also teach these skills in small groups where the groups are based on what skills they need to work on. I do this when students are independently working at their tables. If you are interested in extra help for reading, I am posting videos of lessons that I have taught your child. I am only posting lessons of information that I have previously taught and are a review, not new information. This is just another resource that you can use if you want to. If you have any questions please reach out.
Set 1 videos:
Set 1 Week 1 Day 1 Set 1 Week 2 Day 1 Set 1 Week 3 Day 1 Set 1 Week 4 Day 1
Set 1 Week 1 Day 2 Set 1 Week 2 Day 2 Set 1 Week 3 Day 2 Set 1 Week 4 Day 2
Set 1 Week 1 Day 3 Set 1 Week 2 Day 3 Set 1 Week 3 Day 3 Set 1 Week 4 Day 3
We can read book We Can't See book It Can Sit Book
YouTube TV Show
Reading Buddies is a youtube tv show that reinforces everything that we have learned. It has two main characters that talk about letter sounds, what your mouth looks like, rhyming, blending sounds to read words, whole body listening, and much more. It is educational, but done through a 30 min show on youtube. I know kids are always wanting to watch something on youtube. I wanted to share this resource with you in case it is something you would be interested in. It is not homework. They do not have to watch them. But it is a great way to reinforce what we are learning and easy for you. I have linked a few here for you, but you can find all of them on their youtube channel. You can also search for specific things your child is working on. If they know all their letters but get b and d mixed up, they have one for that. You don't have to watch all of them. It is just another resource. I have watched the full episode 1 and the b/d video and they were good to watch. I have not watched all the other videos yet.
Time To Eat!
Click on the links to see the breakfast/lunch menus and our class snack calendar.
If you click on the picture to the left it will take you to our goals page. If they know all of their letters they can go to the green page. If they are still working on their letters, then they go to the blue page. It has a lot of great resources to practice some of our literacy goals (rhyming, vowels, letters, blending, segmenting, etc)
Reading Logs: Every night when you read to your child 1-2 books, write down the name of the book on the reading log. When the log is full, they will get prizes at school. I have signed up with a program with Pizza Hut for reading books and the school will give them a prize as well. These can be books you read to them right now. Later in the year, you will add books they read to you. Please read to your child. It is one of the best indicators for success at school. If a digital form will be better for you, please let me know and I can make that happen.
Scholastic Book Orders
You can order books from this class page. When you do this, you do not have to send money to school. You pay for it online and it ships straight to your house. You can also send the link to grandparents if they want to buy books for your child.
Class Page: https://orders.scholastic.com/GYQB8
CLASS CODE GYQB8
With a $25 order, you can pick a FREE $5 Book (use code: READS).
Click on my bitmoji to learn more about me.
If you ever need to talk, I am always here. The best way is through class dojo. You can always email me as well. My email is kreams@bpsk12.net
Classroom News (older documents)
Information about what we are learning!
This is where I will put old information so that you can still reference it if you would like to, but keeps the information above more up to date.
Showcasing new things on the website
Showcasing new things on my newsletter
Heart Words