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!