Next Week

September 22 - ISE Holiday

September 24 - PTA General
Meeting
September 26 - ES Assembly
September 30 - Dress Down Day
In October
October 15 - ES Conferences
October 18 to 26 -
Chulalongkorn Holiday
October 31 - Dress Down Day
Volume 1, Issue 4 September 19, 2014
Our Week In Review
It is hard to believe that we have already been in school for 5 weeks! Over the last two
weeks I have been doing a series of benchmark assessments with the students. Today
was one of the main days for that with our DRA records. The information I gather from
these meetings with the students is what I use to create small learning groups. I will meet
with each small group a few times a week to ensure that their math, reading and writing
lessons are meeting their needs and that they are being challenged enough. With this
small group style of teaching and learning, everyone wins. The children that need extra
help get it and the children that have mastered those skills can be challenged with new
things. Next week, when I have had time to organize the reading records, I will send home
some suggestions for how you can encourage and help your son/daughter at home.
This week during our literacy block, we started talking more about our goals for the year
and the work that is involved in becoming a successful, independent reader and writer.
The superstars love the book Up, Up, Down by Robert Munsch so much that we have
decided to do an author study. We will be reading more of Mr. Munschs books and will
try to understand what makes his writing so compelling. We will then apply those lessons
to our own writing.
In our math block, we talked a bit about shapes on Dot Day and did some shape related
centers for a few days afterward, then started using our My Math books to practice math
concepts we covered over the last few weeks with our hands-on activities.
Finally, we decided that we will be changing our house drama center into a car wash sta-
tion. This center is one of the choice students have during our nal learning block of the
day. It is a great time for them to practice social skills and communication as well as math
and literacy. When we decided to change the house center, the students made sugges-
tions for new themes, then voted and nally brainstormed a list of what they would need
in the new car wash station. There will be lists of services available (which allows them to
practice reading and writing), pretend money (which will support their math learning) and
boxes converted to cars (which allows them to be creative and collaborate).
We need your help!
* Please remind your son/daughter that it is important to speak English during the school day. This has been a big focus in class this week and we need
your support.
* Please send in labels from used items in your house. Examples include the paper wrap from soup cans, labels cut from cereal boxes, cracker boxes, etc.
We will be collecting these labels over the next few weeks to use during our literacy time as some of us work on letter sounds and sight words. We would
really love the labels from your childs favorite foods since that helps catch the students interest.
email: alillis@ise.ac.th website: http://isekindergarten.weebly.com