Poetry and Literacy Development

Children love language and are always eager to learn and use interesting words.  Listening to stories and poems read aloud provide children with good modeling and the motivation to become readers.  Poems are great tools to build vocabulary and excite the imagination.  A child's literacy development is sparked by a literature rich environment.  As our young emergent readers examine print and have fun working with words they begin to match the sounds that go with letters and see patterns in words.  Poems provide a predictable form of literature that offers fun vocabulary and success from the rhyming word patterns.  I would like to encourage you to read predictable books and poems with your child to help build their reading decoding skills and fluency.  Here is a fun one to try:

Five little monkeys jumping on the bed.
One fell off and bumped his head.
Mama called the doctor and the doctor said,
"No more monkeys jumping on the bed!"

You can make the poem more fun by adding movements and by changing the tone of your voice to capture your child's interest.  Look for rhyming words together and search for familiar words.  Have fun exploring words together.

Words of wisdom from Dr. Seuss:
" Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!"

Responsible Behavior

  " The time is always right to do what it right."

                                          Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In our kindergarten class we are striving to understand that we are responsible for the choices we make.  Our Downtown School Responsibility Plan gives us four simple words to remember:

• Show
• Remind
• Ignore
• Report

We work to show we are responsible by the things we do and say.  We make good choices about creating quality work, about listening and following directions, and about choosing kind words and actions with others.  

We remind friends that forget in a kind way.  (All of us need a reminder at times to help us get back on track.)

We try hard to ignore the little things that do not impact our learning or hurt others.

We do report when something or someone does interfere with our learning or is hurtful to someone or school property.  No one has the right to stop another friend from learning or feeling safe here at school.  

If someone does make a mistake (as we all do), our goal is to find a way to solve the problem.  Our kindergartners are learning to be problem solvers.  When there is a problem I ask them, "What do think we should do?" or "How do you think we can solve this?"  I am always amazed at how insightful our young friends are and how empowered they seem to feel when they are the ones who can fix the situation at hand.   

Math Exploration

Our children are working to develop strong math problem solving skills.  Are kindergartners are being introduced to the Standards for Math Practice and these strategies will follow them throughout their educational journey.  There are 8 standards on which we are building our foundation.  They are:

1. Make sense and persevere in solving problems.  We are striving to show our students that there are many strategies we can use to solve a problem.  We are also learning that it is important to keep trying and not give up when a problem might be difficult.  The process is as important as finding the answer as we grow as learners.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.  Good math students in kindergarten begin to use numerals to represent specific amounts (quantity).  We learn to use symbols to represent numbers and mathematical ideas and discuss how and why things work.
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.  In kindergarten we are working to clearly express, explain, and organize our thinking.  We use words and symbols to explain our work and we talk about our strategies.
4. Model with mathematics.  In our kindergarten class we begin to experiment with representing real-life math problems in a variety of ways.  We draw, act out, use manipulatives, and develop number sentences (equations) to show our work.  
5. Use appropriate tools strategically.  Proficient kindergarten math students begin to explore a variety of tools to use to solve problems.  
6. Attend to precision.  I love to hear a kindergartner say, "I will be precise."  They know it is important to work carefully, strategically, and to produce their best quality work to be successful.
7. Look for and make use of structure.  Our young mathematicians  begin to look for patterns and structure in our number system and other areas of math.  We use our previous knowledge ("what we know about numbers") to help us solve problems.  
8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.  In kindergarten we begin to examine repetitive actions in geometry, counting, and in comparing numbers and shapes.  For example when counting we will explore how the pattern 1-9 is repeated for each decade set (twenty-ONE, twenty-TWO - thirty-ONE, thirty-TWO etc...).

Kindergarten Reading Skills

As our young learners move through their kindergarten year, they will be striving to develop their literacy skills.  Here are some of the things on which our emergent readers will be focusing:

• Understand the basic features of print. 
• Follow words from left to right, top to bottom, and page by page.
• Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific letters.
• Understand that words are separated by spaces in print.
• Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters.
• Recognize and produce rhyming words.
• Blend and segment sounds in words.
• Add and substitute sounds in simple one syllable words to make new words. (cat  bat  rat  sat)
• Read the kindergarten high frequency words by sight.
• Read emergent (beginning level) texts with understanding.

You can help your child with these skills by reading and discussing a variety of types of books together.  Your good modeling will promote a love for literature as well as a desire to read.  You are your child's first teacher and greatest advocate.  One of the best gifts we can give our young learners is the love of reading.

Welcome to a New School Year!

Welcome to a new school year at The Downtown School!  It has been said that "The Universe is one great kindergarten for man."  We will strive to explore the world around us and grow as learners in our kindergarten class each day.  I am looking forward to a great year together.

“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!”
― Dr. Seuss

Reading Fluency

An excerpt from the phonics webinar by Kimberly Oliver Burnim, 2006 National Teacher of the Year and a Senior Curriculum Advisor at ABCmouse.com: Parent Question: How do I help my child to read fluently? Answer: To read fluently means to read words expressively and smoothly. Children who are not fluent read choppily and word-for-word. This can affect their comprehension, because they don’t remember what they have read by the time they reach the end of a sentence. Reading fluently is an important skill. To help your child learn to read fluently, one of the most important things you can do is to regularly read aloud to your child so that you’re modeling the type of reading you want your child to do. For example, if you’re changing your voice for different characters, your child will know that he or she needs to do the same. If a book that you’re reading has text features such as bold print, and you decide to read a bolded word loudly, you’re modeling that they, too, can do that while they’re reading. Another way to develop fluency is to have your child read a book over and over again. Children tend to become fluent readers after reading the same thing many times. They know when to pause, when to speed up, and when to slow down. As they listen to themselves read more and more fluently, this also helps to build their confidence.

Reading

Here are some comprehension strategies for our young readers:

• Stop and think about what you have already read. 
•  Reread the material. 
•  Adjust your reading speed. Slow down if it doesn’t make sense. 
• Make a connection to what you know, something you have read before, or something that has happened to you. 
• Visualize. Create pictures in your mind. 
• Use conventions of print. 
• Notice patterns in the text structure.  

We have been exploring some of Dr. Seuss' creations this week in honor of his birthday.