May 14th 2017 archive

Newsletter 33: Week of May 14

Highlights from our Week:

We continue to enjoy our time together learning lots in the classroom and playing whenever we get an opportunity both in our classroom and outside in this beautiful spring weather!


Important Dates: 

  • May 29: Memorial Day (no school)
  • June 1: PBL Celebration (10:00-11:00)
  • June 7: Holland Farmers Market and lunch at Kollen Park
  • June 8: Last day of school! Happy summer!
  • June 8: No hot lunch of pm busing

Important Announcements: 

  • Memorial Day Parade: ZCS students K-2nd grade who are interested and available that day are invited to march in the parade in downtown Zeeland! More information will be coming this week!
  • PBL Celebration: I’ll be sending details home soon, but for now please note that your child will be taking part in a PBL unit about animals in May. On June 1st at 10:00 each child will present his/her project in a group! Please join us for cookies and lemonade in our classroom afterward.

Check out how much we’re learning and growing in Christ! 

Bible: This week we learned about Saul’s conversion. God changed his life on the road to Damascus and the Holy Spirit empowered him to spread the Gospel.

Literacy: This week we learned about another letter that makes 2 different sounds in Spanish. When the letter G is followed by an A or an I it sounds like the English J. When it is followed by and A, O, or U it sounds the same as the English hard G sound.

Our literacy project, aalpa, is going very well! Each child has completed the first step, the interpretive task, by reading a book and answering some questions. We’re just getting started on the second step, the interpersonal task, where students will work together with a partner to create a t-chart of living and nonliving things. I am thrilled with the performance your kids are making! There will be one more week of no take home books as I use our Daily 5 time to meet with kids in small groups to work on the aalpa.

  • Reading strategy: Inferring
  • Read aloud: El loro tico tango
  • Vocabulary words
    • el mango (mango)
    • el higo (fig)
    • el datíl (date)
    • la cereza (cherry)
    • robar (to steal)
    • sujetada (hesitation)
    • hurtar (to swipe)
    • sabroso/a (delicious)
    • dulce (sweet)
    • el ala (wing)
  • Word wall word: ¿porqué? (why?)
  • Phrase of the week: Yo sé la respuesta. (I know the answer)
  • Letter of the week: Gg

Math: We learned about two powerful math words this week mayor (greater than) and menor (less than.) We practiced matching up sets of objects to figure out which set was mayor and which was menor.

Exploring God’s World: Our PBL is up and running! This week we worked hard on it and did 3 different lessons. First, we talked about what we would like to learn about our animals. The kids came up with great questions! Then we talked about how to figure out the answers to our questions. The kids came up with some wild ideas like capture the animal and climb a tree to observe the animal. With a little support, they came up with books, maps, and the internet as research tools and on Friday we met with Maestro Minkus’ 7th grade class to begin researching!

Writing Workshop: We continue to work on How-To books. This week kindergarteners wrote about how to speak Spanish or how to attend a parade!


From Our Immersion Coordinator

Join me for an Immersion Parent Round Table Discussion. We will look at a variety of topics of interest to immersion parents (How to provide support at home, how learning to read in Spanish is different than learning in English, How does immersion pedagogy differ from foreign language instruction–particularly in secondary education, etc.) The grade levels are just suggested ranges to don’t feel restricted by them. We’ll meet in the classroom at the back of the media center. Bring your lunch and your questions.

  • May 17 at 12:00: Preschool-3rd
  • May 18 at 12:00: 4th-8th