April 29-May 3

Please remember to send back the permission slip for our field trip to the Building for Kids if you have not done so yet. Thank you!

Upcoming Events
5/10: Building for Kids Field Trip
5/21: Family Night

Reading: As the readers dig in to more challenging books, they will encounter words that are tricky to solve! This week, students will learn that when they get stuck on an unknown word, there are a few things they can do. Readers can...

• Try all of the strategies they know, don't try just one! 
• Set a goal of strategies to try
• Go back to the beginning of the page and reread to try to solve it
• If you've tried everything and still can't solve the word, mark it to solve it with your partner and move on! 
• Get help from your partner, be like a coach! 

Writing: It is our last week of writing all about books. The students will learn to add introductions and conclusions to their books. We will make their books the best they can be by adding using all of the charts and checklists we have created throughout the unit. The writers will be sure to add more details and fix up all conventions such as uppercase at the beginning of each sentence and including punctuation. We are excited to share our all about books with our 4th grade buddies!

Math: Here are a few highlights of what students will be doing in math this week:

• Telling, retelling, and writing equations for addition and subtraction stories
• building partners of 10 in many different ways to build fluency
• Practicing showing partners for 7-9
• Building numbers 1-20 with different tools and looking for patterns within the model

Science: This week, students will learn a key idea about forces: how pushes can change the direction and speed of an object’s movement. We will learn how some mountain towns in danger of landslides can build structures to protect themselves from falling rocks. Students will design and test their own solutions to re-direct falling boulders away from their town and toward a waiting dump truck.

April 15- 26

Hopefully it will start to feel more like spring soon.  In the meantime, we want to thank you for helping your child to come to school dressed for the weather so they are comfortable at recess times.  

As the year comes to a close, there are a few supplies we could replenish in our classroom.  If you would like to donate, please send items to school with your child:

• black dry erase markers
• rolls of scotch tape 

Also, PSC is looking for some items as well.  Here is the link.

On Monday NDLC students will participate in an egg crack off!  Each student should bring one hard boiled egg to school on Monday.  The eggs need to to be plain (no stickers, color or film).  All Kindergarten students should also wear orange on this day.

Important Dates and Reminders:
4/15: Egg Crack Off- Wear Orange and bring a hard boiled egg!
4/15: Family Night 5:30 pm
4/17: 1/2 Day 11:30 Dismissal
5/10: Building for Kids Field Trip

Reading:We are continuing to work on being resourceful readers and to use all we know to tackle tricky parts in our books.   This week and next readers will learn to be especially flexible as they try one strategy, then another and so on, until their reading makes sense, sounds right and looks right.  One way we readers can make this become more automatic is to make plan prior to reading for the strategies they will use by rereading charts they have in their book bin or see around the classroom.   We will also learn about the importance and reasons for rereading.  The big reasons we want students to reread is to make sure they are understanding what is read and to make sure their reading sounds smooth and fluent (not like a robot :)).

Writing: This week we will focus on elaboration: ways to add more to our writing.   We will be using text features like diagrams, captions and definitions, comparisons and examples like we have seen authors try in the books we have read.  We will also begin to make sure we not only give information on each page, but say WHY that information is important.

Math:Mathematicians will practice their non-pattern facts this week. The non-pattern equations are 3+2, 2+3, 2+2, 5-4, 5-3, 5-2, 4-3, 4-2, and 3-2.

We will practice using a variety of strategies including:

A game called subtraction smash that looks like this:


Drawings and math mountains



Using tools such as bead racks, math manipulatives or number lines





Using cut out hands to show the equations


These are great ways to practice any equations that your child may be working on!

Science: This week we will continue our science unit about forces. Our key idea is that by playing with and thinking about forces, people can accomplish surprisingly big things. For example, this week we will solve the mystery, “How can you knock down a wall made of concrete?”  Your child will do an activity where they investigate what happened to a “wall” made of cups when they changed the strength and direction of a paper wrecking ball.

April 8-12

Here is the link for the April school newsletter.


Upcoming Events: 
April 15: Family Night- please return forms by Monday
April 17: 1/2 day 11:30 dimissal
April 18-22: NO SCHOOL
May 10: Building for Kids Field Trip- more info to come

Check out what's happening in the super room this week!

Reading: Readers will begin to ask themselves these questions:

• What strategies have I tried to solve these unknown words?
• Did it work?
• What else could I try? 

By reflecting on what they have tried, the readers will begin to discover when different strategies work best and become more efficient when choosing strategies. Here is a chart of some of the main strategies readers rely on:


Writing: There will be a strong connection between reading from last week and writing this week! As nonfiction readers, students learned that they can ask questions while reading and even try to answer them! Since we are writing nonfiction books, we can use this to add more to our books.  This chart shows the questions we can ask:

 First, writers will read through their books, asking themselves if they answered questions readers might have on each page. Then students will sit with their reading partners, read the books they wrote, and allow their partners to stop and ask questions--just like we did in reading! The partners will work together to try to answer the questions to add more to their piece of writing.

Math:  We are just beginning our LAST math unit of the year...holy cow!!  This unit is called Consolidation of Concepts and will focus on all of the important skills students need to attain in Kindergarten in order to have a solid grasp of mathematical concepts to build on in 1st grade.  All of these topics are repetitive and you might find me to a be a broken record when keeping you in the loop!  Please know that this is by design...our curriculum Math Expressions, is a spiral curriculum, meaning concepts are taught over and over across the year in various ways, taking students' development into consideration and giving them ample opportunity to master and deeply understand concepts!


Science: We will began our science unit about forces:  the pushes, pulls, and other actions that we do whenever we do work. Scientists will learn that before we had machines, we had to do lots of work by hand. We will talk about how machines are not magical; rather they just seem that way because there are often moving parts hidden inside. Encourage your child’s curiosity by asking them to go on a “machine walk” around the house: invite your child to identify machines around your home.(examples include things like a washing machine or dryer, a dishwasher, a hair dryer, an electric toothbrush, a car).