Busy October

Wow!  October is flying by!  I apologize for not posting on the blog lately.  October is a very busy month in elementary schools; fire prevention month, quarterly testing, preparing for parent/teacher conferences, fieldtrips-there's a lot going on!  We are winding down the first quarter of school.  The kindergartners of Room 5B are in full kindergarten mode, having settled into a balanced routine, and we are finishing the last of our quarterly assessments.  Next week will be parent/teacher conferences.  In your child's Ware Bear folder you should have received a conference time.  Please sign this note and mark whether or not this time is ok for you and return the note to school with your child tomorrow (Tuesday, October 14).   Parent/teacher conferences are a great way for me to communicate with you, one-on-one, about your child's progress thus far.  Please come to your conference with questions and concerns...that's what this time is for!  I look forward to our conference together!

Our field trip to the Beach Art Museum at Kansas State University was a great success! We had a lot of fun looking at several of the exhibits and then making our own art.  We discussed the 5-senses and how we use them to appreciate art and other objects in the world around us.  This trip also gave us some good background knowledge about art and art museums that will be put to good use in an upcoming unit about art and music.  The kids' behavior was excellent; you would have been very proud.  

In an effort to keep up with our district's technology plan for the district, your child has been practicing logging on to the computers here at school.  This is a BIG accomplishment!  They are practicing finding the keys that makeup their login name on their keyboard and typing them in correctly.  After logging in, students get to play a fun, theme-related game.  This is a simple procedure to you and I, however for the kindergartners it is the first in many lessons to become proficient in technology.  There are several ways that you can help your child become more technologically proficient at home:

• Have them practice logging on to education city using the login and password taped to the inside of their Ware Bear folder.  This is also a great way to practice basic skills taught in class through fun, interactive, educational games.
• Have your child practice typing his or her first and last name on the computer.  Knowing where those keys are will be extremely helpful the next time we login.
• Show your child the backspace, enter, and space bar keys and explain their function.  Have them practice using them.

Our fall festival is coming up the week after parent/teacher conferences.  This is one of my favorite classroom activities of the year.  We will have a costume party and a special snack on the day of the party.  At conferences I will have sign-up sheets for those that want to bring things for our party.  There will also be sign-up sheets for our Christmas and Valentine's celebrations as well.  Class parties are fun ways to celebrate the holiday season so please think about signing up for one or two things when you visit me for conferences. 

I want to say thank you so much for all you do to support me in the classroom.  It is very obvious that many of you are working with your child on their homework and practicing basic skills like writing their name.  Our class's behavior is truly amazing.  When I've had to be gone for a sub I have received nothing but praise from our guest teacher and paras about how well the class performed in my absence.  I have to attribute part of that to you.  Without your support of our rules and classroom management system (bucket filling) at home, our class would not be reaching the high expectations they need to reach in order to be successful.  Thank you for your continued support.  I look forward to seeing you at conferences. 

Observing art at the Beach Museum

Listening to our tour guide, Miss Jen, explain how this sculpture was made.

Exploring the museum.

Drawing in the gallery.

Making art together in the classroom.

This sculpture was made from cardboard!  The kids were amazed!

Learning about redwood trees.  Many of the sculptures currently on display are carved from redwood.

Art is FUN!

Learning how to login for the first time.

Mrs. Artemis from the USD 475 Tech Department did a great job helping us log in and learn about the computers.

We Made the News!

Thank you to all of you who came out to our Back-to-School Math and Reading Night.  It was great to see all of you and to share my joy of teaching and learning with you and your family.  If you didn't catch it, our school was featured on WIBW news out of Topeka!  Footage from our class was used several times in the newscast so you'll want to make sure you check it out!  To watch your budding celebrity on the news, click on this link and select the "13 News at 10 9/25/2014" news cast.  The segment featuring our class is after the halfway point in the newscast (about the 17 minute mark).  I know your kindergartner will love seeing our classroom and their classmates on the news!

For those of you that did not make it to Back-to-School Night.  I want to give you some information about the Kansas College and Career Readiness Standards, better known as the Common Core State Standards.  There is currently a lot of buzz about the Common Core in the news and in social media.   It is important to remember that the CCSS is not a curriculum or a program and it's not about teaching kids to use different, "funny" strategies.  The CCSS is about teaching kids important concepts to a deeper level of understanding.  This deep level of understanding will strengthen your child's knowledge in core areas of academics and will provide a foundation for future learning.  At Back-to-School Night we discussed the idea of composing and decomposing numbers (building larger numbers from smaller numbers and breaking larger numbers down into smaller numbers).  When students become fluent in these seemingly basic concepts, the easier more complex mathematics (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, etc.) become.  

Another important part of the CCSS is their consistency from state to state.  Before the Common Core it was not uncommon for schools in different states to have different requirements for their students to achieve success.  This made it extremely hard, especially teaching a highly population like the military, to make sure all students were learning what they needed to learn without creating big gaps in their education.  With the CCSS, you can feel at ease that no matter where you go your child will be introduced to and taught the same concepts.  Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns about the Common Core and I will be more than happy to answer them.

Remember, we will be going on a field trip to the Beach Museum of Art this Tuesday, September 30. Students will need to be at the school by 8:00 a.m. so that we can leave the school on time.  We will return to school by 11:00 a.m. and eat lunch at school when we return.  We will be taking a tour of art that explores the five senses.  This goes along with our current unit of study about the human body.  For information about the exhibit that we will be viewing click on this link.

Also, This Friday is Walk-a-Mile Day.  In P.E. the kids will be walking a mile (yes, a whole mile!) to get kids excited about living an active, physical life.  Please make sure your child wears comfortable clothes and good, athletic shoes to school that day.

Thanks for your continued support in the classroom.  Have a fantastic week!

Math and Reading Night is Thursday!

Wow, this is a LATE blog post!  Sorry about that!  Last week was AWESOME.  A pajama party, a different library day and a school picture, not to mention all the learning and fun we had in the classroom sure did make for an exciting and enjoyable week in Room 5B.  This week we learned the sounds /p/, /g/, and /o/.  We continue to sound out words and read new books.  This week we begin our new unit, Head to Toe, about the human body and the five senses.  This is one of my favorite units to teach.  In our learning labs, students will be engaged in a variety of activities to build their knowledge and enhance the discovery of a variety of thematic concepts.  We will also bring in iPads to explore different systems of the human body.  Tuesday we used the "Human Body" app to explore how our brains work.  The kids LOVED it! 

I look forward to seeing you and your child at our Family Read/Math Night this Thursday, September 25th.  You should have received some information about this in your child's Ware Bear folder.  In case you didn't, our Back-to-School Math/Reading Night will begin at 5:25 pm.  I will be hosting two thirty minute sessions where I will give you some more insight into the day your kindergartner and I share together, review the daily schedule, explain various routines and procedures, and discuss homework activities that can benefit your child.  We will also do a fun, take-home family math activity together, in our classroom.  You will also have opportunities to attend a session that outlines our reading program and eat dinner with your family in our cafeteria.  I hope you can make it, as it will be a great way to learn more about your child's day at school.

Just to give you a heads up, I will be out of the room  Thursday afternoon for some training.  I will be sure to go over the expectations for behavior in my absence before I leave.  Please stress to your child how very important it is that he or she does their very best while I am away and let them know that you are counting on them.  When students know they are being held to a high expectation they usually rise to achieve it!  Thank you in advance for your help with this!

In a final note, we said goodbye to Mr. Briscoe last week.  Mr. Briscoe ended his student teaching with us last Monday and went back to Kansas State University last Tuesday to continue his degree.  Please join me in wishing him well as he finishes his final course work and enters the working world as a College of Education Graduate.  Thank you for being patient as I got used to doing things by myself again this week.

Thank you for all you do to support your child, me, and our time together.  Have a fantastic week!

Talkin' 'Bout Freedom!

We had another fabulous week in kindergarten this week.  We learned the sounds /i/, /n/, and /t/ and even began sounding out words!  You could feel the classroom ripple with excitement as the class realized they had actually sounded out, blended, and read the words I put in front of them.  It was magical!  Next week we will continue to learn new letter sounds and blend words.  Please encourage your child's excitement and love for reading by having them practice their concepts of print books they bring home from school.  You have been doing a great job of having your child complete his or her homework!  Readers who routinely practice are better readers!  Thank you for your support with homework.

As we learn our sounds, the kids practice "snipping" short sounds like /d/ and /t/ with their finger scissors

As part of his internship, Mr. Briscoe is slowly taking over more and more components of our day.  This week he began teaching the kids phonemic awareness through rhymes and chants.  Watch the video below to see the class singing and dancing to one of our thematic rhymes, "I Like My Friends" that the very talented Mr. Briscoe put to music.  It was such a creative and fun activity, I couldn't resist sharing with you!

Mr. Briscoe and the kindergartners playing "Freeze," one of our brain games.

In your child's Ware Bear folder you should have received a Scholastic Book Order and a Highlights magazine survey.  If you choose to order Scholastic books, please return the order or order online by Thursday, September 24.  Usually new orders will come home at the beginning of a new month.  This is a great way to build your home library and encourage your child's love or reading.  It is also a great way to get free books for our classroom as each parent order awards our class bonus points that I can redeem for class books.  Please fill out the Highlights survey.  Just check yes or no on the back and SIGN YOUR NAME.  Each signed response I receive (yes or no) works toward getting us FREE stuff for the classroom!   Thank you for supporting your child's kindergarten classroom AND their teacher! :)

The Freedom Walk was a great success! The kids had a great time celebrating our freedom.  We spent a few moments discussing why September 11 means so much to the people of this great country and how you, their parents work hard to preserve the freedoms that we hold so dear.  It was so inspirational to see all of our military children singing about our great country in the whole school assembly, and marching with smiles and cheers through the neighborhood.  Thank you so much to the many of you who walked with us or cheered for us from the sidewalks!  It was great to see you and it really motivated the kids to keep walking (it was a long way to walk for our small legs!).

Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy your time with your family!  We will see you next week for another fantastic week of kindergarten!

Enjoying our popsicles after the Freedom Walk.

These popsicles are cold!!

Popsicles make us happy!

Popsicles make us happy!

"Freedom! Freedom! I am FREE!"

Walking around McClellan 2

Happy to be free!

5B is proud to be free!

Ready for our Freedom Walk sing-a-long.

Ready for our Freedom Walk sing-a-long.

Another AMAZING week!

We had a fantastic week in kindergarten last week!  We learned the sounds /s/ and /d/ and began learning the numbers 0-5.  We visited the library and learned about our colors and more about how the library works.  We also started math work stations this week.  Math workstations is a component of our day that involves your child participating in one of 10 different math centers.  Students work with their partner to review a variety of concepts we've recently learned in class.  The activities are usually problem or project based and are aligned with the College and Career Readiness Standards for mathematics.  The kids had a blast working in stations this week!  See the pictures below for some examples of what we're working on in math work stations right now.

We had our third bucket party this past week!  Remember, as part of our classroom management plan, my kindergartners work to earn 10 "buckets" during the week.  They earn these buckets by filling the imaginary "buckets" of others in the class and in our school.  To learn more about bucket filling and how we use it as a management system, please see the Kindergarten Bear Book that you received at your child's kindergarten transition meeting.  At the end of each week, students who have earned 10 buckets are invited to our bucket party.  Bucket parties are FUN!  This week our bucket party involved us playing with the parachute on the basketball courts.  We had a blast!  Make sure you tell your child how proud you are of how hard they worked to receive all 10 buckets this week!

This coming week will bring with it lots of excitement!  We will be learning about the sounds /t/, /i/, and /n/, continue studying the numbers 0-5, begin our writer's workshop, and continue math workstations.  As always, our library day will be Thursday and your child will be able to check out a new book and have a great time learning with our awesome librarian Mrs. Wait.  To make the week extra special, we will be participating in our school's Freedom Walk on Friday, September 12.  You should have received a short handout about this when your child came home on Friday.  There will be more information to follow.  The kids are very excited about the week to come and so am I.  Your children have been an absolute joy to work with and I'm so thankful for my opportunity to be their teacher this year.  Heres to another FABULOUS week in Kindergarten!

Enjoy these pictures from last week:

Our class, after we finished learning about the number 0.

Kindergartners modeling their Zero the Hero capes.  Zero helps make numbers greater!

Sorting buttons during math work stations.

Giving value to numbers using Play-Doh.  We LOVE math work stations!

Playing Dice Race in math work stations.

Making shapes with rubber bands on geo boards in math work stations.

Playing Race to Trace in math work stations.

Building number stems in math work stations.

We earned 10 buckets!!!  We had a parachute party to celebrate!

We had SO much FUN!

Look at those smiles!

A Fabulous First Week!

I could not have asked for a more fantastic first week of Kindergarten! We spent the week reviewing our classroom and school rules and practicing routines.  Our daily schedule is moving at a more efficient pace every day.  We had our first fire drill, our first marble jar party, and our first bucket party.  It was a very FUN and BUSY week!  Understandably, some of you have had questions about some things.  I am going to take a few moments to touch on some things that you've had questions about.  As always if you have any other questions, please just let me know.

• We will have P.E. and Music every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday.  Please make sure your child wears appropriate footwear on these days.
• Your child will bring home a blue, weekly progress page in their folder.  This shows you how many buckets your child has earned and may include a short note about your child's behavior.  Please sign and return this page each day.  
• R&Rs are a type of reading homework your child will begin soon.  Please don't worry about completing this until you get an update from me. 
• On the first day of school we talked about how to be bucket fillers.  This concept revolves around being respectful and showing kindness and compassion to those around us.  Each kindergartner has the opportunity to earn 10 buckets for the week, for their good behavior.  These buckets are little, bucket-shaped cards kept on a ring in their cubby.  At the end of the week, those students who have earned 10 buckets get to attend our bucket party.  This week, I am proud to say, every kindergartner in Room 5B was able to attend our bucket party!  We had so much fun playing with shaving cream for our party!  For more on bucket filling, please see the Kindergarten Bear book that you received at your child's transition meeting.
• We will have lunch at 11:00 am each day.
• Thursday is our day to check-out library books.  Please make sure they return the book they checked out last week by Thursday of this week so they can check out a new book.  The kids loved meeting our librarian, Mrs. Wait, and playing fun games in the library!
• This week we were also introduced to our classroom para-educator, Mrs. Putnam.  She is a wonderful help and so excited to work with your kindergartner!  

It was a very busy week and I'd like to apologize for the tardiness of this update.  Going forward, my goal will be to update this blog every Friday.  On another note, this will be the last public post on this blog.  Starting with next week's blog, this site will be available by invite only.  Look for an invitation to this blog in the inbox of the email address you gave me at your kindergartner's transition meeting.   If you do not regularly check that address, or if there is another address you'd like me to use please email me, or put a note in your child's Ware Bear folder.

This week we will begin learning our letter sounds, so look for some homework coming home in the Ware Bear folder.  Also we will start sorting in math.  Sorting toys, coins, crayons, or other small items, will help build these skills at home.  It's going to be another great week in Room 5B!  Thank you for your continued support!

The first day of kindergarten was FANTASTIC!  What a great day we had!  We learned the rules of the classroom, read a story, sang and danced to a silly song, played, and had a lot of fun.  Here are some pictures from our first day together:

Our Classroom, Room 5B

Coloring on our first day of school.

Staying inside the lines and coloring carefully...we are already coloring so neatly!

Look what I did!

Hello!  Having fun in the dramatic play lab!

Reading stories in the library lab.

Math fun with Mr. Briscoe.

Playing with the dollhouse.

It was great to spend the day together as a class!  These kindergartners are amazing kids and this is going to be an incredibly fun group to work with.  Make sure you check your child's Ware Bear folder this weekend, there are some important things in there (including some homework!).  Return the folder in your child's backpack on Monday.  Have a wonderful weekend with your family and I will see your kindergartener on Monday!  

-Mr. Scruggs

Welcome to Kindergarten!  It is my esteemed pleasure to welcome you and your child to Room 5B.  Kindergarten is an exciting year of important milestones and I am so glad to be a part of it!  This year will be my ninth year at Ware Elementary as a kindergarten teacher.  I have a bachelor's degree in Elementary Education and a masters degree in Educational Leadership from Kansas State University.  I absolutely love what I do and I strive to create a caring classroom environment where children feel safe and where they love to learn.    The intent of this blog is to provide you with the most current, up-to-date information about the goings on in our classroom.  I plan to update this blog each week with our current learning objectives and pictures of our kindergarten adventures.  As always if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via my email address or school phone number.  Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to work with your child this year, it's going to be great!

Yours in Education,

Mr. Scruggs