Dear Families!
What a great week it has been! I have had so much fun learning about libraries with all of you during live lessons. It looks like you all have been working so hard on your lessons as well! Remember if you have any questions on how to complete your lessons feel free to reach out. I also keep an eye on lessons you are completing and will be reaching out to families who are starting to get too far behind or completing lessons too quickly.
There will be NO SCHOOL on Monday, September 4th, 2023! What this means at MOCA is that you won’t see any lessons on your student’s planners for that day. If you are behind in lessons, you are always welcome to work on this day to catch up. Teachers and staff members will also be out of the office on Monday.
We will be starting our phonics program during Live Lessons next week! (Due to this switch, we will be supplementing Heggerty in the Lesson Intro pages on your reading lessons. Please watch and complete these videos sometime throughout the day to continue to build on our reading skills.)
Our phonics program, better known as the UFLI (“you fly”) Foundations program, was designed by the University of Florida Literacy Institute with two main goals in mind – To support teachers in teaching reading effectively, and to support developing readers, especially those who struggle with early literacy skills. During the class live lessons, we will be teaching foundational reading skills to students that will help them build accuracy and automaticity with skills essential to becoming a fluent reader (i.e. alphabet knowledge, phonemic awareness, decoding, etc.). Phonics lessons are anticipated to be 30 minutes each day, and they will be taught in the regular class live lessons Monday-Friday. If your student(s) cannot attend the Live Lesson(s), it is very beneficial for them to watch the recording of the phonics portion of the lesson so they do not miss out on crucial information. Please note that phonics is not all we will be teaching during live lessons, we will also do a mini lesson each day that will cover other subject areas. We will be starting by learning how to identify, read, and write each letter of the alphabet while slowly using our new skills to blend and decode words as well.
In order for students to get the most out of each UFLI lesson, it is also recommended that students have:
a dry erase marker or two
a dry eraser or an old sock/rag
a small dry erase board OR a piece of paper in a sheet protector works, too (I will be sending out a packet the will have this and some handwriting papers inside it, but note one sheet protector often doesn’t last for very long.)
We will start our Kindergarten Readiness testing next week! This will need to occur in a one-on-one Zoom meeting that will take approximately 30 minutes. So please sign up HERE for a time that works best for you and your student.
Finally, I just wanted to let you all know that I have included the Kindergarten Writing and Drawing rubric below (as well as on my website). We do use this rubric to help us monitor student progress throughout the year. It is expected that every student attempt to write and draw for each assessment. Our goal in Kindergarten is to be 4 Star Writers and Artists by the end of the school year. Currently, most students will fall into the 1 - 2 Star writing category and should be actively striving to become 4 Star Artists (since this is the main way they are communicating with us on their work). If you have any questions about the rubric, please feel free to contact me.
Links:
Have a great long weekend everyone!
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