Monday, October 20, 2008

Dear Families of K-207,

I am attempting to create a blog for our wonderful Kindergarten class. I am excited! Even though I am really not sure of what I am doing, I thought that this would be an excellent way for us as a community to interact with each other. I know how sad it must be for all of you to not know every move your young five year old is making throughout the day. So I am going to attempt to fill in some of the spaces. I am sure that as time goes by, this site will get better and better. As your child's kindergarten teacher, I am deeply aware of how the quality of the family/teacher/child partnership impacts a student's successful year. I believe that one of the greatest factors affecting student success - that cuts across all boundaries of race, religion, economics, culture and ability - is the level of appropriate parent involvement. I think a great deal about family/teacher/child partnerships. One of my main objectives as a teacher is to have strong partnerships with all of our class families, and to involve families in the daily life of our classroom and school. I hope this blog will help a little.

Today marks our 31st day of school and the day of our first "Publishing Party" for our personal narrative writing. Thank you to the many parents who attended and who read with all the children. When we talk about publishing, we want the children to pick a piece of writing that meet three criteria: (1) they love it, (2) they can "read" it and (3) they can make it better. The children revised their writing by adding to the pictures, adding to the words and coloring it in! As you can see from our publishing party today, the children accomplished these tasks and shared their work with the Mrs. Concannon's First Grade Class on Friday and with all of you today. It is a very exciting time. The children were so proud and are now authors. As a working parent, I know how hard it is for many of you to come into the class for an event first thing in the morning. Don't worry. The children read their personal narratives to many of the parents who were here in the classroom today and got a big kick out of the comments that the parents wrote in their books. Even if you missed the celebration, their writing will be posted outside our classroom in the hallway on the second floor. So when you have a moment, you can read it any time.

Thanks to our wonderful Parent Teacher Association, Kindergarten has been receiving chess instruction on Friday!! We are already into our second class and the children are wonderful. Our chess instructor's name is Jairo and he is wonderful and an excellent teacher. Even I am learning chess for the first time. Jairo has been teaching chess at PS 154 for several years. He is very talented and supportive. Our chess class takes place on Fridays, from 12:15 to 1:00. If you would like to join us for a session, please let me know. I would like to thank Lucas' mom who supplied us with four brand new chess games for our class to use. The children love to play chess and there is something to be said for the correlation between chess and a child's studies.

Some news for the week:

Shared Reading Poem: J K and L Poem

Star Book for he Week: The Snowy Day

Writing Workshop: Continuing with Personal Narratives

Reading Workshop: Reading our Emergent Story Books

Math: Patterns all around

Science: Plant Exploration

Have a wonderful week. Please feel free to post a comment. I would love this to be an interactive site for our classroom community.

Ms. Graham

PS: Now I have to learn how to post the great pictures I took of your children!!!