Week of February 24th

Mrs. Preskill
Feb 27
5 min read

Happy Thursday Pandas!

General Updates:

Another happy birthday to our panda, Annie!
From the principal's message
1. Family/Educator Conferences are right around the corner! Once again, we are using Meet the Teacher as our scheduling platform for conferences on Thursday, March 20th (5:00-8:30) and Friday, March 21st (10:00-1:30). Sign ups will open at 3pm March 6th.
  All conferences are virtual via Meet the Teacher’s platform unless you contact the staff members and notify them.
2. Elementary school families: When you open the Meet the Teacher platform, you will see your child's classroom teacher in the list of available conference sign-ups as well as some specials teachers, special education teachers, and related service providers if your child sees them during a school day.
3. Middle school families: When you open the Meet the Teacher platform, you will see one of your child's core teachers in the list of available conference sign-ups as well as exploratory teachers, special education teachers, and related service providers if your child sees them during a school day.
4. Please sign-up for a conference with any staff member listed who you would like to see. Meet the Teacher Conference Sign-Up will close at 4:00 pm on Monday, March 17th. After that, you must contact the building administrative assistant at the school.
  Click on the link below to sign in to Meet the Teacher or copy and paste it into a browser: https://kildeerdistrict96.meettheteacher.com
  For those who may be trying to sign-up for a conference using a mobile device, please know that you may encounter issues navigating the platform. For best results, it is recommended that you try to access the link on a laptop or computer.
  Families with multiple students in KCSD96 may experience issues when trying to switch between sign-ups. To mitigate any problems, please try using a different browser or logging out between sign-ups.
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 were introduced to three new heart words: ate, our, who. The pandas also 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 reviewed "th" and "sh." 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, ate, our, who

Reading: We began our new cycle, predicting change and weather. Students will be able to understand that we can use observations to predict changes. Students will also be able to understand that sharing observations about the weather helps us gain information. This week we read a section of the informational text, My First Big Book of Weather. The weather we focused on this week was winter weather. Students were taught that good readers make connections between ideas in a text. Sometimes, readers need to ask and answer questions to understand those connections.
Writing: The pandas continued focusing on informative writing. Informative writing is about facts and teaches the reader something. This week we researched about winter weather! After becoming experts about winter weather, each student wrote their own informative book all about winter weather. The panda students were expected to write a topic sentence and facts to support the topic.

This week in math...

The pandas continued 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