Crew News December 22nd, 2023

 Announcements 

Electronic Report Cards (EPRs): Here is a document that breaks down where to find your childs EPR, how to read it, and what standards have been covered. These will be available on Saturday at 9am.  

Calendar

December 23rd: Electronic Report Cards are available (more info above)

December 23rd-Jan 7th: Winter Break

Jan 15th: No School

Jan 31st: Ms. Lauren's Crew leads The Beat 9-9:30

Crew Highlights: 

Wow- the Winter Performance was "out of this world!" With an outer space theme, K-3 grades performed with a variety of instruments. Inspirational quotes were read throughout, and a highlight was the lights that students held to reveal the night sky. Our crew did incredible and showed a lot of intergrity during the performance!

Here is a picture taken by Ms. Trena that came at the end of the performance "of the sunrise." Beautiful!

Afterward, our crew enjoyed a craft party. They worked at four different stations.

A HUGE THANK YOU to Lindsey for coordinating all the details and to our wonderful volunteers- I could not do it without you! 

We made two blankets to donate to Children's Hospital.

What a beautiful act of service!

Students made penguins, snowflake ornaments, and ribbon tree ornaments.

They made one snowflake for themselves and one for their 4th grade buddy which was given on Thursday.

Hapy Birthday Dax!

On Thursday, we enjoyed a visit from our local Castle Rock Fire Department, Station 155.

Students learned that smoke likes to travel up, so in an emergency, if you can't get out, you need to get LOW. Students did an excellent job of practicing.

What a highlight and fantastic way to wrap up this expedition: 

learning how firefighters work as CREW.

Guess what the mascot was of their fire truck? 

A PRAIRIE DOG!

I guess each station has a different animal logo- and the one that happens to visit us was the prairie dogs because they work together! We could not believe it!

Fire fighters have to be able to get all their gear up in less than 1 minute!

We learned all about the tools fire fighters use.

They were engaging, answered lots of questions, and encouraged families to make a fire safety plan.

Thank you Castle Rock Fire Department!

They wanted us to share the following resources:

***Create a Fire Escape Plan with Your Family

***Get to Know Smoke Alarms

We debriefed and talked about all the great learning from their visit.

Then students wrote about it in their expedition notebooks. 

These were shared with you on Seesaw.

"Fire fighters can race to rescue us."

"The smoke likes to go up."

Later on Thursday, we had our buddy time with the 4th graders.

The crews exchanged gifts.

Then the 4th graders were excited to show off the circut boards they had created. Some even let their buddies take them home.

WOW! Check out these beautiful trees! Thank you for this treasure of handmade ornaments made by the crew. How thoughtful!

Also, a heartfelt thank you for all the notes, sweets, and gifts!

It is truly a JOY to be your kindergaren teacher, and I am grateful for each and everyone of you.

There is a small wrapped gift in backpacks that the students helped create for you too. 

Hope you enjoy!

Ms. Martha and I would like to wish you a wonderful holiday season!

See you on January 8th, 2024!

~Ms. Lauren

Crew News December 15th, 2023

 Announcements 

Conferences: HOORAY! I got to meet with families to celebrate your child's progress and growth for the first half of the year. How exciting to see their journey in writing and share specific notes of your child's learning. It was a joy to connect with each of you to share these updates. As a reminder, if you ever have any concerns or would like to request a meeting, please email me, and we can find a time to meet. 

*Please NO additional gifts for 4th grade buddies: We will create buddy gifts together next week and exchange them on Thursday afternoon. This reduces the chances of hurt feelings or being left out when others are receiving additional (or expensive) gifts. We have grown these precious relationships and they are not tied to “stuff.” Thank you for honoring this request! 

Clever Login for iReady or Vooks: If you are looking for an educational resource to use with technology, you are welcome to use the "Clever Login QR Code" (which came home in Take Home Folders today) to log into iReady or Vooks. iReady has lessons in math and reading that are just right for your child, according to the diagonostic. Please limit to 15 minutes per session, if you do plan to use. Your child can show you how to check the progress of the lessons (to see if your child is passing lessons or clicking through them). Also, Vooks is a wonderful resource that is a digital library of wonderful books. It will read the stories to you, and it highlights each word as it is read. 

*Don't feel compelled to do iReady lessons or Vooks- this is simply a resource that you may use if you would like.

(Repeated for Reference)

December 20th:

*9-9:30am Primary Winter Performance (Grades K-3)

*9:45-10:15am Intermdiate Winter Performance (Grades 4-6) for those of you with older siblings.

*10:15-11:15am Ms. Lauren's Winter Craft Party

Families welcome! The performances are in the gym, and they will showcase the work that they have been doing with Ms. Liesl in music using percussion instruments. Please have your child wear school colors (blue/green) or dark colors on this day. 

Planning Ahead: We have a lot of fun activities planned the last week before Winter Break. If you are planning to be out of town, please let the front office and me know ahead of time, so that we can plan accordingly for the supplies needed for each day.

Save the Date: Ms. Lauren's Crew will be leading the all school meeting known as The Beat on January 31st from 9-9:25am in the gym. We will be presenting our learning about integrity and what it means to be CREW. You won't want to miss it!

Volunteers Opportunities

-Volunteer Training: Virtual Module

-Classroom Volunteers: sign up (now updated)

-Rug Washing Volunteers: sign-up here.

-Letter formation sign up. 

Calendar

December 20th: 

*Primary Winter Performance 9-9:30am

*Winter Craft Party- Link to Volunteer

December 21st: Community Reading 8:30-9am (Yes- on a Thursday!)

*Firefighter visit in the morning

December 22nd: No School; Teacher Work Day

December 23rd: Electronic Report Cards are available (more info next week)

December 23rd-Jan 7th: Winter Break

Crew Highlights: 

In reading, we have been working on drawing inferences. I explain this as figuring out something that is not said (like how the character is feeling) by looking at clues from the picture and text and combining that with what you know about that (background knowledge) to better understand something that is happening in the story. In your nightly reading, ask your child to practice drawing an inference with you.

This week, we took some time to reflect on how it is going in writing. Students revisited our Narrative Writing Rubric to self-assess how they were doing in each area. On the backside of this sheet, there is a space to write about what students are feeling proud of and what is a goal. WOW! I was impressed with the awareness of strengths and their self-identified goals. I look forward to supporting students with these next semester.

In phonics, our letter of the week was Hh. I woud give students a list of three words, such as hip, head, and cute. Students would have to tell me the word that did not belong and did not start with H. I have noticed so much growth with students being able to discern the beginning sound! Also, with white boards, we practiced sounding out and spelling words, such as hot, hat, hip, ham, and hop. It was a review week on sight words, so we practiced he, has, play, and she. We will have a phonics assessment next week. Here is the updated phonics list. Also phonics booklets went home today. These have great ideas to reinforce learning at home.

In math, we are wrapping up a unit of two dimensional shapes. We are naming shapes and noticing how many sides and corners they have. Students should be able to easily identify a circle, square, rectangle, triangle, and hexagon. We had some time to explore learning using manipulatives in addition to our workbook.

In expedition, we have been learning about how community helpers work as crew. More specifically, we are focusing on firefighters. We have learned about a day in the life of a firefighter, as well as some of the history of firefighting. (Students were blown away that in the olden days, they had to use buckets of water!) We are looking forward to our visit by local Castle Rock Fire Department next Thursday!

With 4th grade buddies, our crew had a blast writing a story about silly and mischievous elves. These went home on Thursday.

Getting ready for our crew's song at the Winter Performance next Wednesday!

Have a wonderful, restful weekend! Stay well!

~Ms. Lauren

Crew News December 8th, 2023

  Announcements 

Conferences: I had the pleasure of meeting with half of our crew families for conferences. My cheeks are still sore from smiling- so many celebrations from the first half of the year! I am SO proud of our learners. I look forward to the second half of conferences next week. See you then!

December 20th:

*9-9:30am Primary Winter Performance (Grades K-3)

*9:45-10:15am Intermdiate Winter Performance (Grades 4-6) for those of you with older siblings.

*10:15-11:15am Ms. Lauren's Winter Craft Party- Lindsey will be sending out information soon for items needed and volunteers. 

Families welcome! The performances are in the gym, and they will showcase the work that they have been doing with Ms. Liesl in music using percussion instruments. Please have your child wear school colors (blue/green) or dark colors on this day. 

Planning Ahead: We have a lot of fun activities planned the last week before Winter Break. If you are planning to be out of town, please let the front office and me know ahead of time, so that we can plan accordingly for the supplies needed for each day.

Save the Date: Ms. Lauren's Crew will be leading the all school meeting known as The Beat on January 31st from 9-9:25am in the gym. We will be presenting our learning about integrity and what it means to be CREW. You won't want to miss it!

(Repeated for Reference)

ACTION ITEM: Conference Questionaire: Before our conference, can you please fill out this short Google form? This helps me prepare for our time together.

First Semester Parent Teacher Conferences:
Here is a link to our First Semester Conference Sign Up, that will be taking place in December. It will be a 20 minute time slot, where I can share celebrations of learning for this first half of the year. Please bring your child to this conference. The conference will start with time for your child to pridefully share with you things in our room and examples of best work. Then we can meet to talk more specifically about growth and next steps. Wow- you are going to be amazed to see such tremendous growth!

Q&A
-I prefer not to have siblings in the room so that the focus can be on your child. However, if there are no other options, then I understand.
-If you EVER have a concern, please email me. We do not have to wait until conferences if there is something you would like to discuss. :)
-In addition to conferences, you will be getting a EPR (Electronic Progress Report) before Winter Break. This is the more formal way that teachers share out learning, but you will find our parent conferences to be where you get more specific, personalized information.
Looking forward to this time together!
~Ms. Lauren

Volunteers Opportunities

-Volunteer Training: Virtual Module

-Classroom Volunteers: sign up (now updated)

-Rug Washing Volunteers: sign-up here.

-Letter formation sign up. 

Calendar

December 13th & 14th: First Semester Conference Sign Up

December 15: Community Reading 8:30-9am

December 20th: 

*Primary Winter Performance 9-9:30am

*Winter Craft Party- More information coming soon.

December 22nd: No School; Teacher Work Day

December 23rd-Jan 7th: Winter Break

Crew Highlights: 

On Monday, we had Ms. Jackie come as a guest speaker about prairie dogs.

She is a Natural Resources Specialist for Douglas County. 

She was amazed at how much our crew already knew!

Be sure to ask your child some new interesting facts that we learned.

The highlight was acting out a day in the life of a prairie dog.

Here they are hiding in their burrows.

Peeking above the mounds to see if there were any predators.

"Sounding the alarm" to let other prairie dogs know there was danger and then a jump-yip to say the "coast is clear!"

Thank you Ms. Jackie!

Prairie dogs bark.

Prairie dogs eat together.

We reviewed what we have learned about CREW.

In art, students are working on a project that will serve as our final product for this expedition. More details to come.

*Ask your child what it means to be Crew. When do you feel like Crew?

Then to wrap up this part of our study about prairie dogs, we created a Venn Diagram to compare the similiarities and differences of our class and prairie dogs. Most importantly, we learned that both work together as crew!

Next week, we will learn about another group that works as crew. Stay tuned!

Ms. Trena came by to introduce a special visitor:

Sparkles the Elf will be visiting crews 

who show the crew value of perseverance.

Ms. Summer's D5/6 Crew helped our crew put stickie notes flags on the work they want to share at conferences.

4th grade buddies were excited to share some of the writing they have been working on. Also it was our Crew's turn to write in our Buddy Journals. It was some of their best writing yet!

At conferences, some families were asking for ideas to support learning at home. Today in take home folders, you will find a copy of our sight words that can be cut out as flash cards. These can be used to help create automaticity. Keep it fun and light! You could practice writing the words in shaving foam, rice, or make it a fun scavenger hunt where they read the word when they find it. 

Also, I resent home the zoophonics letter chart. This can be used to help with practicing the name of the letter, the sound it makes, and an animal that matches the sound. Here is a link to the zoophonics script that gives the name of the animals and describes the motion.

Happy Birthday Sophia!

Hooray for December!

Wishing everyone a joyful weekend,

~Ms. Lauren