Announcements
Take Home Folders: Today you will find a take home folder in your child's backpack. This will go home on Thursdays or Fridays each week (unless there is nothing to send home). Please review its contents, empty it, and return it the following school day. It will have papers, fliers, and etc. No signature is required.
Seesaw: In Take Home folders today, you will find download instructions and a QR code for Seesaw. Seesaw is a secure and private sharing site where I can post pictures from our Crew! Families can only see posts from me and your own child. Our Crew will also learn how to post themselves to share their learning! Today your child uploaded their Self Portrait to Seesaw. Check it out!
Volunteers Needed: I will need a few more volunteers to help put up a Student Work Wall and help with classroom projects. If you are available to help Tuesday or Thursday from 2:45-3:35, please let me know. Thank you!
From Parent Crew:
We track and celebrate our volunteers' efforts through our online portal.
When you track hours, you will be prompted to select your student(s)' team(s). Our Volunteer Expedition has a mountain-gameboard, with 3 different mountaineers making their past waypoints and up the mountain. Each mountaineer represents a team: Team Sneffles (green), Team Pikes (blue), and Team Elbert (charcoal). Ms. Lauren's Crew is Team Pikes!
At the end of each month, volunteer hours will be tallied and the mountaineers will progress accordingly. This is a great visual of how we as a school are progressing towards the same goal of Crew in Action.
All this info is also available on the school website.
Belay Training:
If you are interested in helping our crew climb in the gym this year, please sign up for a belay training session. There will be more too, if these days/times don't work for you. Link to Belay Sign Up
Calendar
August 18th: School Carnival 4:30-7pm
Crew Highlights
Whoosh! And just like that- our crew has completed their first week of kindergarten. Already students are growing in their indepedence of the routines and procedures of our day. Students did a "beginning of year writing sample" which we can use to compare and measure growth moving forward. During reading, our crew discussed and practiced expectations of what it looks and sounds like to be an indepedent reader. In math, we continued to talk about position words, as well as have some time to explore our math manipulatives. In expedition, we are learning about our crew while reading All About Me books and playing the name game. Favorite read alouds this week included The Pigeon Has To Go to School, I'm Rocking in My School Shoes (Pete the Cat), This is the Teacher, There is a Bird on Your Head (Elephant & Piggie) and A Letter From You Teacher on the First Day of School. Overall, I could not be more proud of our crew with adjusting to kindergarten and diving right into learning.
Here are a few photo highlights.
In place of a signature, each child colored a star to show their commitment to our Crew Agreements.
We reviewed the Renaissance Guidelines for Student Behavior:
You may engage in any behavior that does not create a problem for you or anyone else in the world.
If you find yourself with a problem, you may solve it by any means that does not cause a problem for anyone else in the world.
You may engage in any behavior that does not jeopardize the safety or learning of yourself or others. Unkind words and actions will not be tolerated.
This is a lot of words for Kindies, so we summarized into: I can make kind, safe, and respectful (good) choices.
Ms. Trena, our beloved principal, read her All About Me book to our crew.
We are excited to have her come back and read to us soon!
I was impressed with their answers!
We practiced our stamina for indepedent reading time.
Our goal was 7 minutes of silent, focused indepdent reading time.
Hooray! We will be partnering up with Ms. Annie's 4th grade crew this year for buddies.
Buddy day is Thursday. This week, the 4th graders were randomly partnered up with a kindie to read their All About Me book. We did two rotations. They were excited to share connections and common interests!
We will continue to provide opportunities for our two crews to get to know each other. Then, towards the end of the month, official buddy partners will be announced.
On Friday, we created iPad Agreements to establish the purpose and expectations of using technology in our classroom.
Our crew was thrilled to upload their student work to Seesaw. Please follow the instructions that went home in Take Home Folders to get connected and receive notifications when an item is posted. I will use this to send sneak peeks of our learning, post more individual pictures, and to have students share their learning with you. My goal is to have items posted on Seesaw 1-2 times a week.
Exploring with math manipulatives.
Eating snack outside.
Today, we talked about the buddy bench. This is a place to go if you are not sure who to play with or what to do. Our crew was excited to invite others to play if they ever see someone on the buddy bench.
Our crew was full of giggles during this game in PE.
How exciting that our room is coming together. Students picture out where each color backdrop should go and what border should go around it.
I love this process so that students feel invested in the classroom as OUR learning space. :)
A big thank you to our volunteers for helping put up with word wall!
What a fantastic week! Thank you for your part in making this week a success.
Hooray for our kindergarten CREW!
Have a great weekend!
~Ms. Lauren & Ms. Martha
