Announcements
Take Home Folders: Check out a few notable items in Take Home Folders.
*Permission Slips for our hike at the end of this month. Please sign and return by next Friday 9/15.
*Phonics Assessment: Please note that this was only officially assessing the letter m and the sight words I, can, see, and a (which are highlighted yellow). There are extra parts so that I could preassess how your child does with upcoming sounds and sounding out words. I do not expect mastery for the extra parts, so do not worry!
*Phonics Idea Sheet: Can you start helping your child practice sight words at home? I included a fun idea sheet for you to interactively practice these words, instead of just sitting down to write them. Please keep your practice light and fun so that we can keep this new learning something exciting!
*Phonics Booklet: We have completed our first phonics unit booklet. Check out what we have been working on and try out some of the suggested activities at home.
Please empty Take Home Folders and return on Monday. Thanks!
Nut Free Snacks: PLEASE DO NOT SEND SNACKS WITH NUTS for morning or afternoon snack. You many send nut-products with lunches. Thank you for your help with keeping kids safe in our nut-free classroom! We DO have life threatening allergies to nuts in our room.
Volunteers Needed to Tie Dye Drums and Assemble Drums: If you would like to assist Ms. Staci with tie dying drums on Tuesday at 2:45-3:45 or assemble drums on Wednesdays at 12-1, then please fill out this form. Taking part in the creation of the drums is very special (and helpful!), as your child will be using this drum regularly for all of his/her years at Renaissance. Thank you for volunteering!
Last Call: Hike Chaperones: Ms. Lauren’s Crew is going to be doing a hike at Bingham Lake (in the Pinery) on Friday, September 29th. If you are interested in volunteering to chaperone on this hike, please email me by 9/13. We would ask for your help from 8:30-12:30pm. Adults must have completed a REMS Volunteer training to join us, and we ask that only one parent per household attend to accommodate as many families as possible and no siblings please. Students will be riding in our small white buses. Permission slips will go home next week. On 9/13, I will notify the front office of my volunteer list, and I will confirm with you after the approval process.
Repeated for Reference: Volunteer Trainings: Still need to do your volunteer-training? We have an easily accessible opportunity that you can complete in your own time.
Navigate to our Volunteer Training: Virtual Module, to watch the videos, answer the questions, and complete the interactive pieces. It is recommended that you dedicate at least 45 minutes to this training. We understand schedules and family, so thank you for setting aside quality time to diligently go through this module.
Upon completion of the exit slip, and review of your responses, you will earn credit for the volunteer training.
As per communication from REMS admin, it is required that parents who plan on volunteering attend one of the Volunteer trainings. Our hope is the same training across the board will help elevate the experiences for our students, parents and staff, while continuing to provide a safe learning environment.
Repeated for Reference: Volunteers Opportunities
-Classroom Volunteers: I need volunteers for filing Take Home Folders, plugging in iPads, and doing take home projects. Here is a sign up for those jobs. Thank you helping out our crew!
-Rug Washing Volunteers: Everyday, we use green mats for solitude. At the end of the week, I need volunteers to take the tubs of rugs home to wash and roll. If you would like to sign-up for this at home volunteer opportunity, please sign-up here. -Upcoming Volunteer Opportunity: Kindergarten teachers would like to start having volunteers in the classroom to help with letter formation in the mornings, starting in September. Ms. Bethany and Ms. Lauren will be hosting training sessions if you are interested. We are opening this volunteer opportunity up to ALL Renaissance parents.
In this training, we will go over how, what, and why we do letter formation in a particular way. Please feel free to bring your child along as the perfect partner to practice during the training. We ask that you attend a training before you sign up to volunteer.
*9/13 Wednesday 1:15-1:45
*9/15 Friday 8:00-8:30
We plan to offer 2 volunteer slots per classroom from 8:30-9am on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, starting Monday September 18th. More information is available on our online portal. You only need to attend one training (not both).
Calendar
September 15th: Community Reading 8:30-9am; Ms. Lauren's Crew Picnic at Bison Park 5-7pm
September 21st: PCF Movie Night (movie starts at 6:30pm)
September 22nd: Teacher Professional Development Day- No School for Students
September 29th: Ms. Lauren's Crew Hike (regular drop off at 8:30 and pick up at 4pm)
October 6th: Renaissance Adventure Day (RAD)- More info coming soon
October 9-20th: Fall Break- No School
Crew Highlights
In Take Home Folders is an idea sheet on how to practice sight words at home. It is really helpful if you can practice the our letter of the week and sights words in a FUN way. Since students are still learning how to form the letters, learning the letter sounds, and need to memorize the order- repetition is key.
We finished our first phonics unit and booklets went home in Take Home Folders.
Your child should be able to read this text on 28-31.
There are some great activities and games to reinforce learning at home, if you are interested.
Students did a great job with literacy rotations this week. Students would rotate between independent reading, zoophonics, a reading app on the iPads, working with Ms. Martha, and working with Ms. Lauren. I was impressed with their integrity during their stations and transitioning to the next station.
At my table, students were matching lowercase and capital letters. Then they would tell me the letter name and sound.
The zoophonics group did the movements and sounds together.
With Ms. Martha, students were using sand trays to practice letter formation of m and a.
In reading this week, we have been learning about what animals and plants need. We analyzed the text features of these informational texts and used picture clues to help figure out unknown words. Today we drew a Venn Diagram to notice how these two mentor texts were similar and different. They did AMAZING with this!
In writing, we have been practicing different ways to get ideas for writing. Partners shared their writing to get ideas, student thought about topics the know a lot about that they might want to teach about, and students thought about things the love that they might write about. The photo was my example on the day we talked about using shapes to help use draw pictures (rectangle & circle for the tree, ovals & circles for the person, and triangles for the mountains).
*Today your child uploaded a picture on Seesaw of something they worked on this week. Be sure to ask your child what they are proud of about it. Perhaps it was a beautiful lowercase letter of their name, sounding out words, or a detail in the picture. Hooray for celebrating our writers!
This week's math lessons were about sorting. The favorite activity of the week was sorting buttons!
Students discovered that they could sort the same pile of things many times over!
On Thursday, we did a drum circle with our 4th grade buddies. Our crew got to explore how it feels to drum and the different sounds you can create. We practiced how to have drum circle with different beats and how to end together. Check out the video on Seesaw!
After our buddy drum circle,
our 4th grade buddies shared their first writing entry in our Buddy Journals. It was super sweet to see how excited they were to share these letters with their buddies!
Earlier this week, we got a special visit from Buttercup, the service dog. Our crew was amazed when she did a few tricks for us, including a twirl!
A VERY HAPPY birthday to Eva!
Can you believe it is already September?
Check out our Pete the Cat Wall.
After reading "Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons," the crew decorated buttons. It is a nice reminder that we can be flexible "because it's all good!" :)
Hope you have a restful and joyful weekend!
~Ms. Lauren
