Ms. Kaley's Classroom Room 24

Hello Everyone!

Past Week:

This past week we began Geometry with Level 2s and 3s and introduced the penny and nickel to Level 1s.  All Level 1s are working on our penny box 1.  Working with pennies and skip counting by 5s with nickels would be great home activity to do with your child.  Almost all first graders also began learning preprimary sight words.  Some of our Level 1s are working on knowing 3 at a time and some are working on all of set 1.  Sight words are words you can’t necessarily sound out and are the most often words seen in text.  A few of you have asked, “How can I help my child at home?”  Going over sight words (for any level) and reading 20 minutes a day are the most beneficial home activities you can do with your child.  Please visit the site below to work on sight words at home with your child:

Sight Words List.  Click me!  This site also has game suggestions, flash cards etc.

3rd grade Multiplication Goal: This year, the Lower Elementary team made a team wide goal to help support our school goal of improving our student’s math skills.  70% of all 3rd graders (in all of MMA) will know their multiplication times tables up to 12s by the end of May 2018.  My student goal for our classroom is to help support this team goal by having 70% of Ms. Kaley’s/Ms. Misha’s 3rd graders know their multiplication times tables up to 12s by the end of May 2018.  This will be measured in our classroom through the use of Montessori materials, flash cards, game extensions, and through our math facts and monthly multiplication assessments.  3rd grade parents, please begin helping support our school and classroom goal by working on multiplication tables at home.  Start with 0s and then progress up to 12s.  Students are considered mastered in a times table when they can pass off on flash cards on that table in under a minute and can do a times table math facts timed test in under 5 minutes.  I will give each 3rd grade family a copy of the math facts times tables to take home to work on at  Fall conferences.

Fall Conferences are approaching:  I have the Fall Conference schedule ready to go.  Ms. Misha and I have children that attend MMA and we will need to go to our child’s conference too.  I am going to check with Ms. Jen’s schedule and then once I know my time slot I will put up our classroom’s schedule so nobody is double booked.  I should have  the schedule posted by our next post (if not before).

More help/strategies for beginning readers: I attended an all day DIBLES progress monitoring Professional Development this past Tuesday.  It allowed me to look at data and learn to make goals.  My plan is to progress monitor those students who are “red” most often.  If your child is yellow, they will get progressed monitored every other week and those who are green or blue will get progressed monitored once a month.  I am hoping this schedule will help improve reading skills.  For first graders, knowing letter names and sounds were assessed for this Fall DIBELS assessment, but by the middle of the year (January), they are required to start reading a 1st grade leveled passage.  Students who are working on beginning to read really benefit from knowing nonsense words.  Another great resource to have at home to practice with your beginning reader are those nonsense words and to review the letter name fluency.  I will try to make copies for those students to have at home during conferences, but here are my two favorites to use at home

LetterNamingFluency  See how far your child can get in 1 minute.  You can do letter name and/or sounds.  Great tool to use at home for letter practice!

NSFPracticePages  These are nonsense words.  Every month it changes.  We want to see how far a child can get in 1 minute.  Students who start are working on sounding out each sound.  The goal of a nonsense word is to read the whole word.  Very useful to use at home to help beginning readers!

Permission slip: On Friday, I distributed a permission slip.  The white paper has all of our currently scheduled field trips for the year.  If you initial on all those field trips then that one paper takes care of all the field trips for the year!  The pink paper is yours to keep!  This paper is the detail for our upcoming service project with Ms. Steph’s class. Please email our room mom, Katie James, if you would like to help chaperone.  We are only going within a mile radius around MMA, so no transportation will be needed for this field trip.  Please begin thinking about our trip to Black Island Farms at the end of the month.  Carpools, drop offs, and chaperones will be needed for that trip.  Arrival at the farm is at 9:30am.  Please let Katie know if you can drop off your own child, will be a chaperone, and/or will need a ride for your child.  Katie will receive our classroom roster that has ever family’s email.  If you need a ride for your child, she will email everyone who might have an empty seat in their car.  Those who need a ride to Black Island Farms usually meet their carpool at North Shore in the parking lot.  Some families choose to do carpools on their own because they know other families in our class and they go and pick up that student.  If you don’t know any families and need a ride for your child, North Shore is the place for pick up/drop off.  Katie, I would like to know who would like to be a chaperone for our trash pick up by Oct. 9th.  For Black Island Farms, I would like to know the chaperone list and carpool, drop off list by Oct. 23rd.

In cultural this past week: History

Level 1s: October calendar, days of the week, months by season

Level 2s: Kinds of galaxies and a star’s lifecycle

Level 3s: Overview of the timeline of life and began making a timeline of life flip book to use when we begin studying each Era and Period

Friday- Knowing that some of our common foods come from the rainforest.  Some students took home a list to play a grocery store scavenger hunt.  We also had a grace and courtesy lesson on please, thank you, and socially acceptable manners such as holding a door for someone and for gentlemen to open and hold a door for a lady.  Students also began studio this past Friday.  They all said they had a great time.  I also believe this was the smoothest running 1st studio we had!

Upcoming Week:

This coming week we have:

Monday– Monthly Botany lesson with Ms. Rachel Bush right after lunch for 1 hour.  Cultural lessons will be afterwards

Tuesday– Author Gary Hogge will be visiting again!  He will be doing an assembly at 9am.  Our students will still have recess first thing in the morning and then they will go to the assembly.  At 1pm, 3rd graders will go to a writing lesson and receive the lesson from Gary.  He focuses on using details to support your story and make it more interesting to read.  He teaches students how to substitute boring words for more details that can hook your reader.  I will most likely be attending this assembly with the 3rd graders.

Phew! That was a lot of information.  Thank you for reading and have a great rest of your weekend and upcoming week!

Ms. Kaley