Week Overview
I hope you’re enjoying your long weekend! We had an awesome 4 days of school together this week, including a visit from a real artist, Mr. Tannis, on Thursday afternoon. Meeting with teachers from Zeeland Christian and Holland Christian today was a wonderful opportunity to collaborate and get to know other teachers. I am always grateful for the “take-aways” I get when I have the chance to learn from other educators!
Important Dates
- October 2: Picture Day for our Class
- October 17: Morning Field trip to DeGraaf Nature Center
- October 22-23: PT conferences in the evening (more details coming later!)
- October 24-26: CEA convention – No School
Reminders
- Picture Day: Picture day is Tuesday! We will get our pictures taken about 11:00. Please send in your envelope even if you paid online. There are extra envelopes in the office if you need one. If your child is absent on Tuesday, they may get his/her picture taken during another class time slot on another day. I will help you navigate that.
- Book It: Pizza Hut participates in an optional reading incentive program. I will send a calendar/reading log home this week where your child may keep track of the days he/she reads. Please do not get hung up on the amount of reading, but rather, use this incentive as another way to help your child fall in love with reading. If something else works better for your child, there is absolutely no pressure to participate in this particular program. At the end of the month you may turn in the calendar to earn a coupon for a free personal pizza!
- Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA): A note about KRA came home last week. If you haven’t turned in this form, please do so asap.
- DeGraaf Nature Center Field Trip: We will leave school at 9:00 am and return by 11:45 AM in time for lunch and AM dismissal. Parents who sign up to drive will transport your child to the trip. If your child does NOT ride an AM bus, please plan to send in their booster seat. Thank you to the many of you who volunteered to drive! If you are still interested in driving please see the SignUp Genius here. If you are planning to drive, please be sure the office has a copy (emailing one to Carrie is fine,) of your license and current insurance.
Curriculum
Bible: We closed our unit on creation by reading the whole creation story together with the Bibles Mr. McAboy presented to us several days ago. This was a very special moment for our class. The kids loved following along in their own Bibles as I read the words out loud. I hope you and your kindergartener were able to look through your child’s own creation book. I think they did an awesome job illustrating the work of our Amazing Creator!
Genesis 8:22 “Mientras la tierra exista habrá siembra y cosecha, frío y calor, verano e invierno, días y noches.”
Literacy: Our linguistic focus this week was indefinite articles, un and una. In English this is like saying “a ___” as opposed to “the ___.” All nouns in Spanish have a gender. Masculine nouns use un and feminine nouns use una. We are excited to add these indefinite articles to our word wall!
- Reading strategy: Determining importance of text
- Read aloud: Clifford va a la escuela (Clifford Goes to School)
- Vocabulary Words:
- olfatear (to smell/sniff)
- deslizado (slippery)
- descubrir (discover)
- precioso (precious)
- curiosidad (curiosity)
- meterse en lios (to get in trouble)
- Phrase of the week: ¿Puedo tomar agua? (May I have a drink?)
- Letter of the week: Uu
Book of Friends: We “met” two new friends this week- Declan and Lily! Watching friendships grow in our classroom is one of the favorite parts of my job. I love seeing your kids say good morning to each other and wave to each other as they get picked up at the end of the day.
Math: We read a book called Anno’s Counting Book. Each page is illustrated with a scene that represents a number 0-10. Soon we’re working on making a book with our own illustrations.
Exploring God’s World: We continue to talk about our 5 senses: gusto, (taste,) olfato, (smell,) oído, (hearing,) tacto, (touch,) and vista (sight.) This week we focused on sight, vista. Every child used a sticky tape “bracelet” to find and keep one piece of nature they found on our walk outside. Then we closely studied and illustrated our treasures with a magnifying glass and our sense of sight.
Afternoons: This week the favorite choices in play were blocks or with the vehicles and people. I’ve giggled a lot as I watch and support your kids acting out school during play! 🙂 In our math centers we continue to work on numbers 1-10, spatial awareness, and one to one correspondence.
Up in Lights: This week our first friend was up in lights! Kayla, you are a sweet friend and a great helper. Thank you for introducing us to your family and to your favorite song, “Give Me a J-E-S-U-S!” We love you!
From the Immersion Program Director
How do we help to equip our immersion teachers towards the best immersion pedagogy? Thanks to our partnership with add.a.lingua, we can confidently say that all of our immersion teachers are growing in their knowledge of best practice in the world of immersion instruction and this is a huge focus at ZCS. In addition to the normal professional development expected of all teacher, our teachers are on a 5 year trajectory towards the add.a.lingua immersion teaching certification. Our first group of twelve teachers will graduate this year! All of our teachers begin their first three years of teaching by doing 15 hours of immersion-specific training in the summer and then follow this up with 6 more hours of learning throughout the school year (all provided by add.a.lingua). After that, add.a.lingua guides us in the implementation of learning labs which gets teachers into others’ classrooms and guides them in deep discussion and reflection on observed lessons. I can confidently assure you that our immersion team is made up of life long learners who are continually striving to become better teachers!
