Hello KW Families and Friends!
I sincerely hope you all had a restful, peaceful, and fun filled winter break. It is always good to get 2 weeks to relax and spend time with your family and friends. My family had fun staying warm inside while playing games, reading, watching movies, and eating holiday treats. We did manage to find time to play in the snow (which resulted in a bruised tailbone for me) as well as shop, and visit with many friends and family members. It was so nice to be able to eat out at some of the restaurants I received gift cards from (THANK YOU) and also spend my very generous gift card to downtown Naperville. I thank you again for all the generosity and thoughtfulness that was bestowed upon me this holiday season.
January brings BIG changes in Kindergarten. The children seem to return from break more mature and ready to take on the challenge of becoming prepared for first grade.During the first few weeks back we will spend a good amount of time assessing the children as we prepare for report cards and begin to change up our flex groups. Each child will be assessed for their 2nd quarter math skills as well as on our Kindergarten sight words and their current reading levels. Students will also take our winter CBM tests. In order to do these assessments, the children may be doing more seat work or independent reading/writing for a few days. But once we get our new scores, it will be full speed ahead! When we pull all this information together, we will look at what your child's needs are. We will place them in a flex group that works on the skills they need to build upon or that provides them with enrichment. We will also begin to differentiate within the classroom more during centers and writers workshop. We strive to provide the very best education for each and every one of our May Watts kids.
If you volunteered to help out with our learning centers, you should be receiving a schedule of your dates very soon. If you can no longer make a date that you thought you could, please try to switch times with another parent. If you can not find someone to switch with, please contact me ASAP so I can help out. During these learning centers, I pull individuals, or small groups of students, to work on skills. It is helpful if I know ahead of time if I will not be able to do this for the day.
This week is a short one...a good way to ease back into things! We will learn about the letter F as we talk about frogs, ficition and non fiction books, and family/friends. I look forward to seeing everyone tomorrow. Don't forget it is late start Wednesday!
