Week of February 17th

Mrs. Preskill
Feb 21
3 min read

Happy Friday Pandas!

General Updates:

We had a panda birthday this week! Happy Birthday Annie!
Please check out the specials classes update here!
If you have already signed up to be a mystery guest, I would love to welcome you back to the classroom for a second time!
1. This is a fifteen-minute time slot that you are able to sign up for to either be a mystery reader or to teach us about your beautiful cultures! Please note, there are only two adults over the age of 18 allowed into the building for this volunteer opportunity at a time.
2. Some ideas of things you could share related to your culture (but are not limited to) are: photos (holidays, travels, clothing, etc), videos, music, games, stories, puppet show, art project, etc. You are also welcome to bring in any stories and read them to the class for enjoyment! If you are bringing in books, please bring 2-3 books to share during this time. Cultural connections are totally up to you and what you are comfortable with. We can't wait to welcome you into our classroom this year! If your work schedules are tight and the time slots available do not work for you, please reach out and we are able to plan this over Zoom or you are able to send a video in that we can share with the class!

This week in literacy...

Phonics: The pandas continued to learn about digraphs. A digraph is a pair of letters that represent a single sound. A digraph typically consists of two letters that together make one distinct sound. This week we learned the digraph "th." For example:
- ch in "chip"
- sh in "ship"
- th in "thumb"
- wh in "whale"
- We also continued to identify short and long vowels in words.
  - Short Vowels
    - cat (short "a")
    - pen (short "e")
    - bit (short "i")
    - pot (short "o")
    - cup (short "u")
  - Long Vowels
    - cake (long "a")
    - feet (long "e")
    - bike (long "i")
    - note (long "o")
    - cute (long "u")

Sound Collection: /m/, /s/, /l/, /n/, /f/, /r/, /v/, /z/, /p/, /g/, /d/, /t/, /k/, /b/, /w/, /h/, /kw/, /j/, /y/, /ks/, /z/, /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/,

Letter Collection: m, t, p, a, s, c, h, i, d, f, r, o, g, l, n, u, b, k, v, e, j, w, z, q, x, y

Heart Word Collection: the, in, my, a, is, for, I, am, here, and, at, go, it, like, be, to, can, not, you, are, do, will, did, too, with, me, all, was, no, so, say, now, have, said,

down, come, they, that, this

Reading: We finished our literacy cycle Living Together: This is Home. In this unit, our goal is for learners to understand that home is an important concept to all living things and that the environment affects living things. This week we continued reading the literature text, Where is Home, Little Pip? A literature text has characters, settings, and events. In this literature story we identified the main character, the setting, and the order of events.
Writing: The pandas continued focusing on informative writing. Informative writing is about facts and teaches the reader something. This week we researched about pandas! After becoming experts about penguins, each student wrote their informative book all about panda. The panda students were expected to write a topic sentence and facts to support the topic.

This week in math...

The pandas began learning about a story problems. A story problem is a story that has numbers in it. In kindergarten, we are using the 3 Reads Checklist to solving story problems. That means we listen to the story 3 times. The first time we read we listen for the story and the situation. The second time we read we listen for the numbers and what the numbers describe. The third time we read we listen for the mathematical question to determine if we will be adding or subtracting. Then students are encouraged to use manipultives and pictures to solve the story problem.

Reminders

Please label your child's snack daily and pack this separately from the lunchbox.
Water bottles stay in the classroom, if you want your child to have a drink for lunch, please send a separate drink.
If you would like your child to buy a drink at lunch, please make sure there is money in the account for the lunch card.
Extra clothes and PE shoes should be labeled and stored in your child's cubby.
Please see Mrs. Smith's Principal's Message for further information about Willow Grove: principal's message